WordPress Coding Standards is an automated code quality control tool that ensures compliance with official WordPress development standards.
What Is It?
WordPress Coding Standards (WPCS) is a set of automated rules and checks that analyze your PHP code and identify non-compliance with official WordPress standards. It’s based on PHP_CodeSniffer and contains WordPress-specific development rules.
Main WPCS Components:
1. PHP_CodeSniffer (PHPCS) – the base engine for code analysis
2. WordPress-Core – core WordPress rules
3. WordPress-Extra – extended rules for plugins/themes
4. WordPress-VIP – rules for high-load projects
Practical Application
Example 1: SQL Query Validation
// Bad code - direct $_GET usage
$results = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM {$wpdb->posts} WHERE post_title = '{$_GET['title']}'");
// Good code - with prepared statements
$results = $wpdb->get_results($wpdb->prepare("SELECT * FROM {$wpdb->posts} WHERE post_title = %s", sanitize_text_field($_GET['title'])));Example 2: Function Naming
// Bad code - no prefix
function getUserData() {
// code
}
// Good code - with prefix
function my_plugin_get_user_data() {
// code
}Example 3: Hooks and Escaping
// Bad code
echo '' . $user_content . '';
// Good code
echo '' . esc_html($user_content) . '';Overall Concept Vision
✅ Advantages:
- Automatic detection of security and performance issues
- Unified code style across team
- WordPress.org compliance for plugins/themes submission
- Time savings on code reviews
- Training for junior developers
❌ Disadvantages:
- Initial setup complexity
- Possible false-positives
- Additional time for fixing existing code
- Team training requirements
🎯 When to Use:
- Developing plugins for WordPress.org
- Team collaboration on projects
- Long-term code maintenance
- When security is critical
⚠️ When You Can Skip:
- One-time quick fixes
- Prototyping
- Legacy code without refactoring plans
Summary
WordPress Coding Standards is a professional tool for writing quality, secure, and maintainable code. Just as we use debuggers and linters in other programming languages, WPCS becomes the standard for WordPress development and helps write code that meets industry standards.
Next Step: Installation and configuration of WPCS in local development environment.