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WordPress How to Build a WordPress Plugin Building a WordPress Plugin Settings Page How to Create a Plugin Template with a Settings Page

valeriuv
valeriuv
20,999 Points

Why are we using an action hook and not a filter hook? I tried add_filter and it worked.

In one of the videos, Zac said that actions hooks are when we want to do something when wordpress does something, and filters are used when we want to manipulate wordpress content.

1 Answer

Code wise add_action() and add_filter() both do the same thing. In fact, add_action() simply calls add_filter().

From what I understand, the idea behind using add_filter() vs add_action() is more to do with making it easier for someone reading the code to understand what the hook is doing.

This explains it better: http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/48756/whats-worth-using-add-action-when-we-can-simply-use-add-filter