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Implementing namespaces and coding standards in WordPress plugin development

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As WordPress projects grow in complexity, organizing your codebase becomes essential. Whether you’re building a plugin, theme, or block library, a clean and scalable architecture makes development faster, onboarding easier, and long-term maintenance far less painful.

In Refactoring the Multi-Block Plugin: Build Smarter, Register Cleaner, Scale Easier, I walked through setting up a flexible structure for managing multiple static, dynamic, and interactive blocks within a single plugin. That setup serves as the foundation for this guide.

Here, we’ll take things a step further by introducing PHP namespaces, autoloading with Composer, and enforcing consistent coding standards across JavaScript, CSS, and PHP. These aren’t just best practices — they’re practical steps for maintaining quality and scaling your code as your project grows.

We’ll walk through:

Setting up PSR-4 autoloading with Composer

Structuring plugin functionality into reusable, purpose-driven classes

Enforcing consistent styles with automated linting and formatting tools

This workflow is flexible enough for solo developers, yet robust enough to support team collaboration on large-scale projects.

Pre-requisites

This article builds on Refining a Multi-Block Plugin. If you’ve already followed that guide to scaffold a plugin with static, dynamic, and interactive blocks, you’re ready to dive into this next step.

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