How to Make a WordPress Plugin in 2025

To make a WordPress plugin in 2025 requires only 3 files, the plugin PHP file, the style.css file and the script.js file.

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What we’ll create in this post is a super simple WordPress plugin that will provide us a short code to use on the website. This short code will display ‘Hello World’ on our website.

You can see the end result here:

Let me show you exactly how to make a WordPress plugin!

How to Create a WordPress Plugin in 2025

In order for us to create a ZIP that imports into WordPress without issue, we need to create the following folder structure.

Folder Structure

Generated using ASCII Tree Generator:

hello-world-plugin/
├─ css/
├─ js/

Plugin PHP File

After that, create a hello-world-plugin.php file in the root of this folder. This will be the file that WordPress uses to install the plugin and also display the plugin settings/info in the WordPress Admin panel.

Open this new hello-world-plugin.php file and enter the following code:

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Hello World Shortcode
Description: A simple plugin that adds a shortcode to display 'hello-world!'
Version: 1.0
Author: Your Name
*/

// Prevent direct access to this file
if (!defined('ABSPATH')) {…