WordPress Hooks Timeline

The order the common action hooks actually fire during a typical front-end page load. Click any hook for what it's for.

Action Hooks — Fixed Order, Every Page Load1 / 15

Not the full list — the WordPress core Hook Reference on developer.wordpress.org has every one. This is the common, stable sequence worth knowing by heart.

muplugins_loaded

Must-use plugins have just loaded — the very first hook available.

Example code for the selected hook

add_action( 'muplugins_loaded', function () {
    // your code here
} );

A Few Common Filters (fire on demand, not on this fixed timeline)

Filters run whenever the relevant template tag is called, not at one fixed point in the page load — so they sit outside the timeline above rather than inside it.

the_title
Filters a post's title every time it's displayed via the_title() or get_the_title().
the_content
Filters post content before display — this is how shortcodes and wpautop() (auto-paragraphs) actually get applied.
excerpt_length
Filters the word count used by the_excerpt() — the classic example from the paired lesson.

Hook Reference — By Category

These fire on their own trigger — a save, a login, an admin page load — not at one fixed point in every request, so they're grouped by category instead of a single sequence.

Save & Update

save_post

Fires every time any post type is saved — including autosaves and revisions, which trips up a lot of first attempts.

Example code for the selected hook

add_action( 'save_post', function () {
    // your code here
} );