Simple Plugin

I’ve developed quite a bit on Wordpress and other platforms building plugins and such.

Great! Those skills will help you get moving quicker when developing for EE. First I suggest you read up on the different between Add-On types (if you don’t know already). A “plugin” in WordPress and a “plugin” in ExpressionEngine are very different things.

1. Import Theme Option - I can’t believe this doesn’t exist….

Are you trying to build a 1-click process for installing themes (designs) like WordPress does? If so, you might not want to try that. People choose ExpressionEngine because you aren’t locked into a box (hence custom fields).

2. Theme Settings Plugin / Module - I would like to create a module that allows for style and color controls. I have no idea how to enable this within EE.

I suggest looking through the Module tutorial, getting very familiar with the database tables and drafting out how you might achieve this with the existing EE classes and your knowledge of PHP. It could be done with a simple plugin and handled directly from your templates or it could be done with a Module and have a visual backup component. Up to you 😊

3. I would like to create a simple plugin with an On / Off switch for features on a site. If it’s set to on it does this… If off it does nothing…

This is very very broad. It’s very easy to create a module that has an “on/off” switch to it. Again, it depends on how you would want to implement this as EE does a good job of “getting out of the way”

Any help is greatly appreciated … even some simple plugins that I can pick apart and dissect.

My biggest suggest would be to build a site in EE (even just a test site) if you haven’t already. Then check out devot-ee.com for many many many many many add-ons. Download some plugins and modules and chop apart the code. Keep in mind that these are primarily 3rd party developers. EllisLab does have general guidelines for add-on development so be sure to read up on those as well.

I hope this helps!