I know: If you’ve been working with WordPress for any amount of time creating themes or plugins, then you’re probably familiar with filters. Even if you’re not really sure how they work, you’ve likely worked with something like the_content.

And by that, you’ve likely written a line of code that looks like this:

It’s enough to work with, too. Usually, this is used whenever you want to modify the content before sending it to the browser to render.

But I recently had to work with it in a somewhat unusual way that required the usual of this filter, a template file, and PHP’s output buffer such that I was buffering WordPress content.

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Whenever you’re working on a plugin that’s going to have a decent set of options (and I’m not talking about giving users too much to think about because “decisions, not options,” remember?), it’s wise to initialize default WordPress options.

By that, I mean it’s important to set up an array or whatever data structure you like to use (but WordPress does love its arrays) and prepare them to be saved before the user even interacts with the settings page(s).

Think of it this way:

A user installs a plugin; they’ve yet to select any option; we need to drive the UI elements through input fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, etc., so we have functions that make calls into the database. But where they are they going to get their options?

That’s where this come into play.

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