Submitting Your First Plugin to WordPress.org

SUBMITTING YOUR FIRST PLUGIN TO WORDPRESS.ORG@BostonWP

@aaronware@linchpin_agency

http://wordpress.org

AARON WAREPRESIDENT @ LINCHPINNearly 20 years as a Web Professional 8ish years using WordPress (right around WP 2.0)

I lead an awesome team at Linchpin. We have some plugins on WordPress.org One of them I am going to talk about shortly

@aware on WordPress.org and on Slack @aaronware on Twitter

@bostonwp@aaronware

@linchpin_agency


WE’RE HIRING! LINCHPIN.AGENCY/CAREERS

WORDPRESS RIJoin Us! 2nd Tuesday of Every Month at 6:00PM

W o r d P r e s s R I@WordPressRI #RIWP

COME SEE ME @ WORDCAMP BOSTON

WORDCAMP RISeptember 30th & October 1st New England Tech East Greenwich Campus

Tickets Now Available! 2016.rhodeisland.wordcamp.org

http://2016.rhodeisland.wordcamp.org

Assumptions

I AM ASSUMING YOU HAVE A PLUGIN ALREADY BUILT

@bostonwp

AND WE WILL BE RETROFITTING + ADJUSTING

OUR EXISTING PLUGIN.


Assumptions

I AM ASSUMING YOU HAVE…

@bostonwp

THOUGHT ABOUT SECURITY + INVESTIGATED THE WORDPRESS CODING STANDARDS


More Tools

@bostonwp

I’LL SHARE SOME USEFUL LINKS AT THE END

IF YOU ARE STARTING FROM SCRATCH OR NEED SOME USEFUL LINKS


WHY?MY FIRST QUESTION

http://giphy.com/gifs/coca-cola-sad-futbol-noo-qn6rtLtmwIX60

@bostonwp


IN A CONVOLUTED SPACE DOES YOUR PLUGIN DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT?

WHO CARES?

WordPress.org Plugin Repo

WILLINGNESS TO PARTICIPATE

▸ Are you willing to answer questions about your plugin?

▸ Are you willing to fix issues that come up?

▸ Are you open to feature requests?

▸ Are you willing to Open Source your plugin? (It’s required)

▸ Are you open to haters hating?

@bostonwp@aaronware

@linchpin_agency


WordPress.org Plugin Repo

MORE STUFF▸ The plugin must not do anything illegal, or be morally offensive (that’s subjective,

we know).

▸ The plugin must not embed external links on the public site (like a "powered by" link) without explicitly asking the user's permission.

▸ They also have a large list of detailed guidelines, but mostly they say how not to be a spammer.

@bostonwp

https://wordpress.org/plugins/about/@aaronware

@linchpin_agency


Getting Ready To Rumble

IF YOU’RE COOL WITH THE PREVIOUS ITEMS….

Are you pumped or what?

@bostonwp http://giphy.com/gifs/kids-warrior-ultimate-DrTJN2J8fzaA8

▸ Is the Ultimate Warrior even wearing pants?

▸ That kid at the end has a sweet cowboy hat


LET’S GET TO WORK!@aaronware

@linchpin_agency@bostonwp

WHAT IS GPL? WHY IS IT REQUIRED AND WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH MY PLUGIN?

- BRUCE WILLIS

Aaron Ware

Understanding GPL and how to say GNU

https://www.gnu.org/gnu/pronunciation.en.html

@bostonwp


WordPress Foundation Stance on GPL

WHAT IS GPL?The GPL is a copyleft license, which means that derived works can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD licenses and the MIT License are the standard examples.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html@aaronware

@linchpin_agency

@bostonwp

WordPress Foundation Stance on GPL

HOW DOES GPL AFFECT MY PLUGIN ON WORDPRESS.ORG?The WordPress Foundation considers all plugins and themes listed on WordPress.org as derivative work of WordPress as such. Plugins and Themes released on on WordPress.org are have the GPLv2 and above license automatically applied to them upload submission to the .org repo.

https://wordpress.org/about/license/

▸ Your plugin must be compatible with the GNU General Public License v2, or any later version. We strongly recommend using the same license as WordPress — “GPLv2 or later.”

▸ If you don’t specify a compatible license, what you check in is considered GPLv2 or later.


@bostonwp



readme.txt

THE MOST USEFUL FILE IN YOUR ENTIRE PLUGIN

@bostonwp

https://wordpress.org/plugins/about/readme.txt@aaronware

@linchpin_agency

DO NOT USE THE TAG “PLUGIN” IN YOUR PLUGINS LIST OF TAGS!

- WAYNE GRETZKY

Aaron Ware

Proper Tag Usage

https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/ @aaronware@linchpin_agency

@bostonwp

readme.txt continued…

STARTING NEW, GETTING INSPIRATION OR GENERATING

▸ You can manually edit the file shared in the previous slide.

▸ Get inspiration from some popular plugin’s readme.txt files for examplesSee: https://wordpress.org/plugins/stream/ <— I think it’s a great example

▸ Use Generate WP: https://generatewp.com/plugin-readme/

@aaronware@linchpin_agency@bostonwp

https://wordpress.org/plugins/stream/

https://generatewp.com/plugin-readme/

readme.txt landing

VALIDATING

▸ https://wordpress.org/plugins/about/validator/ will validate your plugin readme.txt for formatting and quasi markdown validation


https://wordpress.org/plugins/about/validator/

i18n l10n

LOCALIZATION, INTERNATIONALIZATION AND TRANSLATION

▸ Your plugin can be translation ready in just a few steps

▸ Updating your Plugin Header to include a text domain and domain path (optional)

▸ Use the WordPress gettext methods for String output of your plugin. Think _e(‘hello Dolly’, ‘my-plugin’); vs echo “Hello Dolly”;

▸ Use Poedit, Grunt and Glotpress to allow for translation

https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/internationalization/how-to-internationalize-your-plugin/https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/load_plugin_textdomain/

i18n l10n

LOCALIZATION, INTERNATIONALIZATION AND TRANSLATION▸ An example .pot file based used in translation

https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/internationalization/how-to-internationalize-your-plugin/https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/load_plugin_textdomain/https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/handbook/tools/poedit/

Visual Elements

ASSETS FOLDER

The assets/ folder of your plugin will house banners, icons and screenshots of your plugin. These assets will be displayed within the .org plugins directory and within the WordPress dashboard.

More Info About Assets

IMAGE SIZES▸ Start by creating an assets/ directory in the root of your SVN checkout (if one doesn't

already exist). This will be on the same level as tags/ and trunk/, for example.

▸ Inside that assets/ directory, you can make a file named banner-772x250.png or banner-772x250.jpg. The image must be exactly 772 pixels wide and 250 pixels tall. No GIFs.

▸ To support high-DPI (aka 'retina') displays, you can additionally make a file named banner-1544x500.png or banner-1544x500.jpg. The image must be exactly 1544 pixels wide and 500 pixels tall. No GIFs. This image, if present, will only be served when the website detects that the viewing browser is on a high-DPI display. Read this feature’s announcement post for more details and special notes about creating this image.

Initial Plugin Submission

NOT A LOT OF REQUIREMENTS

▸ Plugin Name

▸ Plugin Description

▸ A valid .zip of your plugin that also include a read file

▸ Volunteers do the initial review so be patient


YOUR NEW .SVN REPOAfter Plugin Approval

SVN (SUB VERSION)Oldie but Goldie https://wordpress.org/plugins/about/svn/


@bostonwp

Svn And The .Org Repo

MAKING COMMITS TO WORDPRESS.ORG▸ WordPress.org is a plugin host not just a directory. In order to handle releases we

have to play within the rules of the sand box.

▸ Once created you will use your wordpress.org credentials to also log into your repo

▸ SVN while different in how it works, it is similar to git in that they are both versioning systems.

▸ I wont get into the complexities of mirroring .git to .svn because I’m not an expert.






YOUR FIRST CHECKOUT. PUTTING THINGS IN THE TRUNK


Trunk is similar to master (in git)


YOU CAN “TAG” STABLE RELEASES TO KEEP ORGANIZED



YOU CAN ALSO USE BRANCHES FOR DEVELOPMENT AS WELL


▸ This is useful for beta releases.

▸ Also good practice in general.

▸ Personally I only ever use Tags and Trunk

▸ I have a deploy script I wrote in Grunt to create a package for wordpress.org with out off my build scripts


Sharing Is Caring

PROMOTING YOUR PLUGIN▸ Meet Ups are great for feedback prior to release (or post release)

▸ WordPress Advanced Users Group on Facebook

▸ Reaching out to WP Tavern and other online publications

▸ Jetpack.pro

@bostonwp@aaronware

@linchpin_agency

ONCE YOU HAVE YOUR PLUGIN ON WORDPRESS.ORG CHECK OUT JETPACK.PRO


Useful Things

STARTING FROM SCRATCH AND MORE TOOLS

▸ Pluginception: https://wordpress.org/plugins/pluginception/

▸ generator-wp-make: https://github.com/10up/generator-wp-make

▸ Poedit

▸ Have you checked out the WordPress Coding Standards? https://github.com/WordPress-Coding-Standards/WordPress-Coding-Standards

▸ What do you guys use?


https://wordpress.org/plugins/pluginception/

https://github.com/10up/generator-wp-make

https://github.com/WordPress-Coding-Standards/WordPress-Coding-Standards

THANKS FOR HAVING ME

@bostonwp@aaronware

@linchpin_agency

AARON WAREPRESIDENT @ LINCHPINNearly 20 years as a Web Professional 8ish years using WordPress (right around WP 2.0)

I lead the awesome team at Linchpin. We have some plugins on WordPress.org One of them I am going to talk about shortly

@aware on WordPress.org and on Slack @aaronware on Twitter

@bostonwp@aaronware

@linchpin_agency

QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS TIME!

@bostonwp@aaronware

@linchpin_agency

Technology

Submitting Your First Plugin to WordPress.org