Too many actions/filters!

Question

New to wordpress here. The concept of actions/filters in and of itself is not too difficult to grasp. What I am overwhelmed by is the HUGE amount of actions and filters available. When I am looking at tutorials/guides, they say "simply add this function to the wp_head action or after_setup_theme". Without these tutorials, how on earth would i know to hook that function to that action?

As a beginner, how the heck would i know what is the appropriate action to hook on to? Any advice on how to navigate this? Thanks

Answer 1

Take a look at Mike's answer to a similar question more specifically the plugin he posted there can be used to create a list of all action hooks and filters that were called to generate that page in order of execution.

Answer 2

The best way to learn the most important filters is to read the source code. Whenever you want to change the output of a function read its source. Then you’ll either find the hook in this function or in another function called by the first. In some cases there is no hook and you have to hack … but that’s the next level.

There are some tools to inspect hooks, and you will write your own probably sooner or later. But nothing beats reading the source.