WordPress Terminology Options Vs. Settings

These two are pretty close, but relate to slightly different stages of the process. In purely technical terms WordPress has two different APIs — Options API and Settings API.

Options API deals with saving and retrieving options from database. So its scope and scope of “options” in terminology is that of purely storage.

Settings API deals with admin pages, forms, receiving/validating/sanitizing data, and finally using Options API to store it. So in terminology it refers more or less to level of admin interface and user interaction.

Depending on nature of your plugin its page should be named either after its own name or after what plugin does. Then it should be nested appropriately in a level such as Settings or Appearance. Creating top level pages for the plugins is not uncommon, but is often considered overblown and annoying, especially so if the plugin/theme doesn’t have many things to put there.

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