Plugin Review: Hello World
This being my first plugin review, it seems fitting that it be a review of a plugin called Hello World. Lets start off with the basics:
Plugin: Hello World Code Generator
Author: Carl Sverre
Website: WordPress Plugin Directory, Home Page
Description: Generates a random hello world code snippet in one of many languages. Just drop the short tag [helloworldsnippet] into a post or page.
Compatibility: The plugin directory claims that it is downward compatible to WP 2.7, but I ran it on 2.5.1 without issue.
This is a plugin that really needs no description. The Hello World Code Generator, generates hello world code. This being the case I’ll get right into the four categories I’ll be judging the plugin on: Usefulness, Usability, User Interface, and Code.
Usefulness
Okay so generating hello world code for display in a post at random isn’t very useful, but this plugin does not claim to be useful. Rating this plugin on its usefulness wouldn’t be too fair when its goal is not to be useful. Considering that it does what it says it does I’m going to say that this category is not applicable.
Usability
This plugin requires no configuration and installation is a matter of dropping the files into your plugin directory. The use of the shortcode makes using this plugin exceedingly simple.
When I first saw this plugin the first thing that popped into my head was that it would be nice to drop it into my header, footer, or sidebar to display a short code snippet. This is not possible for two reasons, however. The first is that the this plugin uses short tags and they will only be parsed in posts or pages. The second is that some of these hello world code snippets consist of many lines; too many to insert into a header. In order to serve this purpose the code snippet probably shouldn’t be any more than three lines.
User Interface
Hello World has two output modes. If you use the [helloworldsnippet] tag it outputs the code without formatting. This is perfect if you intend to use it in combination with a syntax highlighter. If you use the [helloworldsnippet_pre] tag the code is wrapped in <pre> tags before outputting, which is perfect if you don’t have or don’t want to use a syntax highlighter.
Code
The code is pretty much what I would expect from a plugin this simple. Its clean and well written. One thing that I was happy to see was that this plugin cleans up after itself. On uninstallation the table it created in the database is dropped, which is exactly what you should expect when uninstalling a plugin.
To Summerize…
Hello World does exactly what it says it does more or less as well as anyone can expect. The only things I can think of to improve upon would be to use filters instead of (or in addition to) short tags and to have an output mode for only short code snippets.
Apparently my example didn’t go through so here is a pastie:
http://2dsquid.pastebin.com/m34fecd80
Hey mate! I appreciate the review! I didn’t expect anyone would use my plugin let alone review it, and I think you did a great job.
As for your usability comment about dropping the hello world snippet into your theme… You can do that by calling the function “helloworld_get_random_snippet()” in your template. It will return the snippet formatted into a string. I realize I didn’t mention it in the plugin page, so ill make sure to in a future version.
Example:
Also if you want to reduce the maximum sized snippet in the database (limit the database to only snippets of x lines or fewer) edit line 36 in helloworldgen.php and change it to a smaller number. Then reinstall the plugin and you should be set!
Hope that helps, and thanks again for the review!!
~Carl Sverre