Have you ever seen a WordPress plugin with action links in the plugins list and wondered how it was accomplished? It is actually quite simple to do. WordPress has a hook for that.

Deep within the bowels of WordPress you will find a filter named plugin_action_links. This filter accepts an array containing a list of links that will be placed in the plugin action. It can be used like so:

Setup the hook

add_filter('plugin_action_links', 'plugin_action_links', 10, 2);

The function takes the list of action and the name of the current plugin as parameters

function plugin_action_links($links, $file)

Now you want to check to ensure you are looking at the row only for your plugin

if ($file == plugin_basename(__FILE__))

Finally, add the link to the actions array

     
        $link = 'Call to Action';
        array_unshift($links, $link);

Do not forget to send back the updated set of actions

return $links;

You should now see something similar to the following on your plugin in the plugins page.

All together now!

add_filter('plugin_action_links', 'plugin_action_links', 10, 2);

function plugin_action_links($links, $file) {

    if ($file == plugin_basename(__FILE__)) {
        // The "page" query string value must be equal to the slug
        // of the Settings admin page we defined earlier, which in
        // this case equals "myplugin-settings".
        $settings_link = 'Call to Action';
        array_unshift($links, $settings_link);
    }

    return $links;
}