Rick Radko began building web sites and applications in 1996, and has been developing WordPress websites since 2008. Over that time he has amassed significant experience with WordPress, coding plugins and designing custom themes. In 2011, Rick became involved in the WordPress community by starting the Ottawa WordPress Meetup Group and speaking at WordCamp Toronto. Since then he has been a repeat presenter at WordCamp Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa. Rick is also one of the organizers of WordCamp Ottawa.

Rick is the founder of R-Cubed Design Forge, where he develops and designs web sites and applications using open source software. Rick specializes in custom development and multilingual websites.

Presentation: A Peek into the World of WordPress Plugin Development

My talk will introduce the concepts of creating WordPress plugins while walk through the code for a simple widget plugin.

What do you want people to learn from your presentation?

I want people to get an idea of what goes into creating a plugin, to be able to set-up a simple plugin shell that they can add to on their own.

What attracted you to WordPress in the first place?

I’ve worked with WordPress for the past 5 years, and I want to see it continue to grow. Organizing this WordCamp and speaking too, provides an opportunity to give back to the WordPress community in a way that supports it and helps it thrive.

What are you most looking forward to at WordCamp Toronto?

Meeting and connecting with other WordPress enthusiasts.

Why did you decide to speak?

I’ve worked with WordPress for the past 5 years, and I want to see it continue to grow.  Being involved in WordCamps, organizing and speaking, provides an opportunity to give back to the WordPress community in a way that supports it and helps it thrive.

What is your favourite plugin or theme, and why?

As a developer I use a lot of different plugins, but few that I use most of the time are Gravity Forms, Google Analytics for WordPress, and TinyMCE Advanced. I’m also using a couple new ones for building multilingual sites on WordPress multisite – Multisite Language Switcher and WP Native Dashboard.