Why WordPress powers the web - See It in Action

Why WordPress Powers the Web

📖 Scenario: You want to create a simple WordPress plugin that explains why WordPress powers a large part of the web. This plugin will show a list of key reasons on any page using a shortcode.

🎯 Goal: Build a WordPress plugin that registers a shortcode [wp_power] which outputs a list of reasons why WordPress is so popular and powers many websites.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an array called $reasons with 4 exact reasons as strings

Create a variable $min_length set to 10 to filter reasons by length

Use a foreach loop with $reason to build a filtered list of reasons longer than $min_length

Register a shortcode wp_power that outputs the filtered reasons as an unordered HTML list

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

WordPress powers over 40% of websites worldwide. Plugins like this help site owners add custom content easily.

💼 Career

Understanding how to create shortcodes and manipulate data arrays is essential for WordPress plugin development roles.

1

Create the reasons array

Create an array called $reasons with these exact strings: 'Open source and free', 'Huge community support', 'Flexible and customizable', 'Thousands of plugins and themes'.

Wordpress

<?php
// Plugin main file

// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use $reasons = [ ... ]; with the exact strings inside.

2

Add minimum length filter variable

Create a variable called $min_length and set it to 10.

Wordpress

<?php
// Plugin main file
$reasons = [
    'Open source and free',
    'Huge community support',
    'Flexible and customizable',
    'Thousands of plugins and themes'
];

// Your code here

Need a hint?

Just write $min_length = 10; below the array.

3

Filter reasons by length

Use a foreach loop with variable $reason to check each item in $reasons. Add reasons longer than $min_length to a new array called $filtered_reasons.

Wordpress

<?php
// Plugin main file
$reasons = [
    'Open source and free',
    'Huge community support',
    'Flexible and customizable',
    'Thousands of plugins and themes'
];

$min_length = 10;

// Your code here

Need a hint?

Initialize $filtered_reasons = []; before the loop. Use strlen($reason) > $min_length inside the if.

4

Register shortcode to display reasons

Register a shortcode called wp_power using add_shortcode. The shortcode callback should return an unordered list <ul> with each $filtered_reasons item inside <li> tags.

Wordpress

 $min_length) {
        $filtered_reasons[] = $reason;
    }
}

// Your code here

Need a hint?

Define a function wp_power_shortcode that builds a string with <ul> and <li> for each filtered reason. Register it with add_shortcode('wp_power', 'wp_power_shortcode');