I am going to write a WordPress Plugin soon and I am looking for advice or experience

[Xarzu]

I am going to write a WordPress Plugin soon and I am looking for advice or experiences from people who have tried this.

What I want to do is this. I want to add additional fields that someone has to enter before they post a comment on a blog.

Does this sound like any existing plugin?

I have seen a list of APIs that I might be able to use in the plugin. Do the API's replace the existing functionality in WordPress or do they add to the functionality?

[vangogh]

First how much experience do you have working with WordPress? Plugins aren't too complicated to develop, though naturally it helps if you have experience working with WordPress.

I'm not sure if what you're looking for already exists, but it's easy enough to search at WordPress.org and find out. Be careful about adding more fields to the comment form. The more you require people to do in order to leave a comment, the less comments you'll get. Make sure there's a good reason to ask those extra questions.

As far as adding to or replacing existing functionality it depends on how you build the plugin. You can build some plugins that add a little to what's already there or you can build a plugin to replace some functionality with your own.

[eborg9]

I am going to write a WordPress Plugin soon and I am looking for advice or experiences from people who have tried this.

What I want to do is this. I want to add additional fields that someone has to enter before they post a comment on a blog.

Does this sound like any existing plugin?

I have seen a list of APIs that I might be able to use in the plugin. Do the API's replace the existing functionality in WordPress or do they add to the functionality?

I think that adding more optional fields would be a good idea..specifically if people could add their social networking profile addresses to be displayed with their comment...indicated by small icons underneath their name.

I'd stick with the top 4 Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, and My Space. If you wanted to add more fields, I would then include Flicker, and You Tube. I wouldn't get too much into the bookmarking sites like Digg.

I've been looking for something like this for over a year that's not connected with any outside service. If you could pull that off and make it easy and functional...that would be a very popular plug in. I'd even pay for it,if it worked and had good support.

[mattbeck]

My advice would be to take a look at some of the Captcha plugins for a starting point.

Obviously they are interjecting themselves into the comment submit process.

You can pretty much hook into anything, but you have to be careful.

Simple plugins are simple, more complex plugins can get really tricky.

[vangogh]

My advice would be to take a look at some of the Captcha plugins for a starting point.

Good idea. Another I can think of is set WordPress to require registration prior to commenting. I'm still not sure quite what the OP is looking to do though.