I am writing a plugin that will display a timeline of historic events, and I am looking for ways to make the output customizable. I was considering including a template/example within the plugin folder that can be overridden inside the theme folder. My idea was to make sure WP looked in the theme folder first for a customized template before resorting to the one I create.
If this is not good practice, let me know!
What functions can I use to do the above functionality?
You could try the following shortcode demo:
/**
* The shortcode [history_timeline] with a custom output template.
*/
add_shortcode( 'history_timeline', function( $atts = array(), $content = '' )
{
ob_start();
if ( '' == locate_template( 'templates/timeline.php', TRUE ) )
include( plugin_dir_path( __FILE__ ) . 'templates/timeline.php' );
$html = ob_get_clean();
return $html;
});
where the shortcode is [history_timeline] and
if ( '' == locate_template( 'templates/timeline.php', TRUE ) )
include( plugin_dir_path( __FILE__ ) . 'templates/timeline.php' );
means:
If /wp-content/themes/MYTHEME/templates/timeline.php is located, then it will be automatically loaded.
Else: /wp-content/plugins/history-timeline/templates/timeline.php is loaded.
where we assume that __FILE__ is in the history-timeline root directory.
