Settings

WordPress provides a powerful suite of APIs and tools that plugin developers can use to make their administrative interfaces easy to build, secure, and consistent with the design of the rest of the admin.

Two APIs of interest are the Settings API and Options API. The Settings API focuses on providing a way for developers to create forms and manage form data. The Options API focuses on managing data using a simple key/value system.

Settings for themes and plugins are stored in a database table called $prefix_options, where $prefix_ is defined by the $table_prefix variable set in the wp-config.php file. Options are a standard key/value setup, where the value can be a string, integer, or array.

Settings options are both set and retrieved using the Settings API.