First part of a new tutorial series
 

I have just released the first part of a longer series of tutorials about making addons. You can read it here on the wiki.

When following the tutorial, make sure to disable all other addons to get the expected results.

Let me know what you think and what you expect the next part to be. :D

Since it doesn't really seem like any has any suggestions on what to cover next:

If you're doing it aimed at complete beginners to coding, cover things like what lua is, ifs, loops, for loops, and/or tables.
If you're trying to aim it at people new to lua, cover what's different from other languages.
You could also direct them to some other sites or pages that talk about that.

As for what stuff to start putting in an addon, I'd suggest showing how to make a /slashcommand - it was extremely useful for me when starting out, and it's an easy way for the user to interact with the addon. Another option would be choosing a simple event, and doing something with that.

I'd also suggest covering /script very early - it is probably the best tool to use to start learning about addon coding.

You should also talk about the on addon loaded event. It's in pretty much every single addon.

I don't plan to cover language basics in this tutorial. The expectation is that the reader has already followed the advice in this wiki page and made himself familiar with Lua.

As mentioned at the end of the first part, the next part will be about reacting to user input and slashcommands are the simplest way to do that without building a gui. Mentioning /script is a good idea as it is really nice to be able to try things without having to reload the UI.

I will write about events in another part as they are not really necessary for handling input and I want to keep the parts focused on one aspect at a time. :)

I just posted the second part. Hope you like it. :)

Part 3 is here. Have fun!

Fantastic work! Thank you.

Also, it would be a good idea to tell anyone reading the tutorial about the resources they can access, for example the esoui developer forums, the gitter chat, or even the pts guild.

Good idea. I'll try to integrate them somehow. I already mention some of them in the Getting Started guide, but it can't hurt to point towards them more often.

Part 4 is now available.

Part 5 is still in the works in case anyone is wondering. I didn't finish yet because I was on vacation and the server is down the whole day today anyways, so I'll hold on to it for next Sunday. To make up for it, I will extend it a bit beyond what I originally planned, update all previous parts for 100016 and upload all code to github so you can compare results after finishing a part. :)

Part 5 is now online. The update of the previous parts will follow tomorrow.

Part 6 is here. :)

And part 7 is here.

There won't be a new part this or next week as I am too busy to finish writing them.

Great Tutorial, I'm right now at part 4 and it already helped me a lot to better understand the eso addon structure. I like the detailed descriptions and explanations why something is done.

Had minor problems with part 3 and 4 as it was sometimes unclear where exactly I should put the code. In part 4 my saved variables file was created but the notes were never saved, had to fiddle around for that one. But it all worked in the end. Would be great if you could put the complete code at the end of each part of the tutorial though. A 'this is how your code should look like' section maybe.

Thanks for the tutorial :D

Thanks for the feedback!

I tried to reduce the amount of handholding with each part, but maybe it is a bit too much in part 3 and 4.
You can read the complete code on github. Each chapter has its own tag in the history. I was thinking of writing an introduction to the tutorial where that fact is mentioned, but I'll also consider adding a direct link to the code for each chapter at the end of each one.

If I can gather enough motivation I'll finish the remaining parts in the near future. :D

Yay, thx for the link