10 Essential WordPress Interview Questions

Published on 07 September 16

Michelle Follow

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Consider the following code snippet. Briefly explain what changes it will achieve, who can and cannot view its effects, and at what URL WordPress will make it available.

add_action('admin_menu', 'custom_menu'); function custom_menu(){ add_menu_page('Custom Menu', 'Custom Menu', 'manage_options', 'custom-menu-slug', 'custom_menu_page_display'); } function custom_menu_page_display(){ echo '<h1>Hello World</h1>'; echo '<p>This is a custom page</p>'; }

This will add a new menu item labelled Custom Menu to the side menu of the WordPress dashboard. When you click on this menu item, WordPress will call the function ‘custom_menu_page_display’ and show a page titled Custom Menu, with the heading Hello World and a paragraph that reads This is a custom page.

With default settings and roles, admins can view it and all lower roles can’t. In fact this menu item will only be visible to users who have the privilege to manage options or change settings from WordPress admin dashboard.

The admin custom page will be made available at this (relative) URL: ?page=custom-menu-slug.

2. How would you change all the occurrences of Hello into Good Morning in post/page contents, when viewed before 11AM?

In a plugin or in theme functions file, we must create a function that takes text as input, changes it as needed, and returns it. This function must be added as a filter for the_content.

It’s important that we put a little effort to address some details:

Only change when we have the full isolate substring hello. This will prevent words like Schellong from becoming sgood morningng. To do that we must use word boundary anchors in regular expression, putting the word between a pair of \b.
Keep consistency with the letter case. An easy way to do that is to make the replace case sensitive.

<?php function replace_hello($the_content){ if(current_time('G')<=10){ $the_content=preg_replace('/\bhello\b/','good morning',$the_content); $the_content=preg_replace('/\bHello\b/','Good Morning',$the_content); } return $the_content; } add_filter('the_content', 'replace_hello');

3. What is the $wpdb variable in WordPress, and how can you use it to improve the following code?

<?php function perform_database_action(){ mysql_query(INSERT into table_name (col1, col2, col3) VALUES ('$value1','$value2', '$value3'); }

$wpdb is a global variable that contains the WordPress database object. It can be used to perform custom database actions on the WordPress database. It provides the safest means for interacting with the WordPress database.

The code above doesn’t follow WordPress best practices which strongly discourages the use of anymysql_query call. WordPress provides easier and safer solutions through $wpdb.

The above code can be modified to be as follows:

<?php function perform_database_action(){ global $wpdb; $data= array('col1'=>$value1,'col2'=>$value2,'col3'=>$value3); $format = array('%s','%s','%s'); $wpdb->insert('table_name', $data, $format); }

4. Consider the following code snippet and explain the purpose of wp_enqueue_script. Can you figure out if something is wrong in the snippet?

add_custom_script(); function add_custom_script(){ wp_enqueue_script( 'jquery-custom-script', plugin_dir_url( __FILE__ ).'js/jquery-custom-script.js' ); }

wp_enqueue_script is usually used to inject javascript files in HTML.

The script we are trying to queue will not be added, because add_custom_script() is called with no hooks. To make this work properly we must use the wp_enqueue_scripts hook. Some other hooks will also work such as init, wp_print_scripts, and wp_head.

Furthermore, since the script seems to be dependent on jQuery, it’s recommended to declare it as such by adding array(‘jquery’) as the 3rd parameter.

Proper use:

add_action(‘wp_enqueue_scripts’, ‘add_custom_script’); function add_custom_script(){ wp_enqueue_script( 'jquery-custom-script', plugin_dir_url( __FILE__ ).'js/jquery-custom-script.js', array( 'jquery') ); }

5. Assuming we have a file named wp-content/plugins/hello-world.php with the following content. What is this missing to be called a plugin and run properly?

<?php add_filter('the_content', 'hello_world'); function hello_world($content){ return $content . "<h1> Hello World </h1>"; }

The file is missing the plugin headers. Every plugin should include at least the plugin name in the header with the following syntax:

<?php /* Plugin Name: My hello world plugin */

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6. What is a potential problem in the following snippet of code from a WordPress theme file named footer.php?

... </section><!—end of body section- -> <footer>All rights reserved</footer> </body> </html>

All footer files must call the <?php wp_footer() ?> function, ideally right before the</body>tag. This will insert references to all scripts and stylesheets that have been added by plugins, themes, and WordPress itself to the footer.

7. What is this code for? How can the end user use it?

function new_shortcode($atts, $content = null) { extract(shortcode_atts(array( type => warning ), $atts)); return '

‘.$content.’

'; } add_shortcode(warning_box, new_shortcode);

This shortcode allows authors to show an info box in posts or pages where the shortcode itself is added. The HTML code generated is a div with a class name alert plus an extra class name by default, alert-warning. A parameter can change this second class to change the visual aspect of the alert box.

Those class naming structures are compatible with Bootstrap.

To use this shortcode, the user has to insert the following code within the body of a post or a page:

[warning_box]Warning message[/warning_box]

8. Is WordPress safe from brute force login attempts? If not, how can you prevent such an attack vector?

No, WordPress on its own is vulnerable to brute force login attempts.

Some good examples of actions performed to protect a WordPress installation against brute force are:

Do not use the admin username, and use strong passwords.
Password protect wp-login.php.
Set up some server-side protections (IP-based restrictions, firewall, Apache/Nginx modules, etc.)
Install a plugin to add a captcha, or limit login attempts.

9. The following line is in a function inside a theme’s function.php file. What is wrong with this line of code?

wp_enqueue_script('custom-script', '/js/functions.js');

Assuming that functions.js file is in the theme’s js/ folder, we should use‘get_template_directory_uri()’. '/js/functions.js' or the visitors’ browser will look for the file in the root directory of the website.

10. Suppose you have a non-WordPress PHP website with a WordPress instance in the /blog/ folder. How can you show a list of the last 3 posts in your non-WordPress pages?

One obvious way is to download, parse, and cache the blog’s RSS feeds. However, since the blog and the website are on the same server, you can use all the WordPress power, even outside it.

The first thing to do is to include the wp-load.php file. After which you will be able to perform any WP_Query and use any WordPress function such as get_posts,wp_get_recent_posts,query_posts, and so on.

<?php require_once('../blog/wp-load.php'); ?> <h2>Recent Posts</h2> <ul> <?php $recent_posts = wp_get_recent_posts(array(‘numberposts’=>3)); foreach($recent_posts as $recent){ echo '<li><a href="' . get_permalink($recent["ID"]) . '">' . $recent["post_title"] . '</a></li> '; } ?> </ul>