Forking and Improving WP-OOP-Settings-API for WordPress Plugins and Themes

Forking and Improving WP-OOP-Settings-API for WordPress Plugins and Themes

In the process of developping Mail Control, we needed and easy way to create simple setting page.

After some research, we came across the WP-OOP-Settings-API library, a lightweight open source library based on the WordPress Settings API. This library aims to make it easy to create setting pages for WordPress plugins or themes. However, we at Instareza found that the library had some issues and limitations.

Rather than abandoning the library and building something new from scratch, we decided to fork the project and improve it. Our goal was to create a more easier to use and flexible library that not only supported plugin or theme settings pages but also simple metaboxes for posts.

After forking the project, we fixed the issues and added the missing features we needed:

• Adding the ability to be installed via composer (for an easier usability)
• Adding a better fields sanitization
• Simplifying the usage : Just initialize the WP_OSA class with an Array defining the sections and fields, and it’s done
• We also extended the library to support Metaboxes for Post Types.

The library is now easier to use and more flexible, making it possible to create Settings pages and Post metaboxes with just a few lines of code. We also made sure to keep the library lightweight, so it won’t slow down your website.

One of the benefits of open source software is that anyone can fork a project, improve it, and share their changes with others. We’re proud to have contributed to the WordPress developer community by forking and improving the WP-OOP-Settings-API library.

Note that the original WP-OOP-Settings-API library is licensed under GPL Version 2, which means that anyone is free to modify and distribute the code, as long as they make their changes available under the same license, so if you’re a WordPress developer looking for a library to create settings pages or metaboxes for your plugin or theme, check out our forked version of WP-OOP-Settings-API on GitHub.