Can a plugin be used to contain all custom functions to extend other plugins

Question

I am very new to Plugin development and I have used my themes functions.php file to modify functionality as needed to date.

As a result of conversation with a customer I was asked if it is possible to create a super plugin that could manage all of their customization to existing plugins and I wasn't sure. So I wanted to ask about other devs experience or how you would handle this situation.

The goal is to protect against having to customize a plugin and then losing that functionality when a new version of the plugin is released.

Answer 1

If your plugin customise functionaity of other plugins through hooks (actions and filters) the answer is Yes.

Answer 2

You could think of your theme's functions.php file as a sort of theme-based plugin. Almost anything you do in there can be moved to a plugin, and vice-versa, the exception being actions specific to themes and plugins, like activation/switch hooks, and any actions that are triggered between when plugins are loaded and when the theme is loaded. Refer to the Action Reference to see the order in which things happen.

It's always a good practice to move code not directly related to a theme into a plugin, so that the functionality is present regardless of what theme is active.

Answer 3

It really depends what kind of modifications you need to do. Both @Alexey and @Milo are correct in their answers, but bear in mind that you may not be able override funtionality in other plugins.

Even if you can, there's always the possibility that when the 3rd party plugin is updated your overrides will no longer work.