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I pretty much started in the same place as you a while back, and have created something similar. Here's what I think you need to know.

1. Work out how to create your basic hello world first and foremost. A simple plugin will consist of a few comments at the top of a PHP file dropped into your plugins directory. Notice the variable calling the class which gets it moving. Constructor of the class calls add_top_level_menu, when this is clicked on (see $function variable) the display_page() function gets kicked off starting to build out your page.

   admin_url('admin-ajax.php'))); } function add_top_level_menu() { // Settings for the function call below $page_title = 'Plugin Name'; $menu_title = 'Plugin Name'; $menu_slug = 'plugin-name'; $function = array( &$this, 'display_page' ); $icon_url = NULL; $position = ''; // Creates a top level admin menu - this kicks off the 'display_page()' function to build the page $page = add_menu_page($page_title, $menu_title, $this->capability, $menu_slug, $function, $icon_url, 10); // Adds an additional sub menu page to the above menu - if we add this, we end up with 2 sub menu pages (the main pages is then in sub menu. But if we omit this, we have no sub menu // This has been left in incase we want to add an additional page here soon //add_submenu_page( $menu_slug, $page_title, $page_title, $capability, $menu_slug . '_sub_menu_page', $function ); } function display_page() { if (!current_user_can($this->capability )) wp_die(__('You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page.')); //here comes the HTML to build the page in the admin. echo('HELLO WORLD'); } } ?>

2. Once you've created internal functions to return your data, whatever that may be. (use global wordpress data functions, e.g. $wpdb->get_results($sql).

3. AJAX inside the admin is a bit different to how you normally use it. All wordpress AJAX calls hook into admin-ajax.php. I found this: http://www.garyc40.com/2010/03/5-tips-for-using-ajax-in-wordpress/#js-global quite good at explaining things.

4. If you are creating tables: something like the below will do the work for you. search for dbDelta in the codex.

   function plugin_install() { global $wpdb; $table_name_prefix = "plugin-name"; $table_name = $wpdb->prefix . "plugin_name"; $sql = "CREATE TABLE " . $table_name . " ( id mediumint(9) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, post_id mediumint(9) NOT NULL, score mediumint(9) NOT NULL );"; require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/upgrade.php'); dbDelta($sql); }