As you know WordPress is a content management system and use for creating your website or blog post and WordPress Powers over 35% of all the websites on the internet. WordPress is not only used for creating blog posts it is also used for the most popular way to create eCommerce stores as well. WordPress is an open-source content management system licensed under GPL which means that you can use or modify the WordPress software for free as you want. You can download and use thousands of free themes and plugins from WordPress.
Why I need a WordPress Plugin?
A plugin is a package of small functions and code that can be added and run to a WordPress website. A plugin can increase functionality or added some new features to your WordPress websites. Because WordPress is developed on PHP and MySQL plugin also create in PHP language. A plugin can be something like if you want to show your artwork to the world you can use Portfolio Filter Gallery or fetch your social feed like Instagram or Flickr with auto animated walls you can go for Animated Live Wall or if you need a contact form widget for getting question and queries from your customers on your site you will like Contact Form and if you are a blogger and want to show your blog post filtering with categories or tag you can use the Blog Filter. The plugin also makes your task easier and faster.
Another reason develope plugins is there’s one cardinal rule in WordPress development, it’s this: Don’t touch WordPress core. This means that you are not allowed to edit core WordPress files to add functionality to your site.
So what you should do to increase your plugin growth on WordPress Org?
Like every job it is not easy to increase the growth of your plugin because there are thousands of plugin ion WordPress and you should compete with them. If you are a plugin owner you know that everyone wants there plugin on top but if your plugin is different, bug-free and you have quality code then people will love it.
Plugin Should be different from others
If your plugin is different from other then it may higher chance to get popular.
- Problem Solving – If your plugin can solve the problems that people face generally then its good
- Social Media – If your plugin related to social media then everyone will love it. social media continues to rise. It’s time to plan for the future and keep ourselves a step ahead of others.
- Get Inspired with Popular plugins – You can research the popular plugin what they are providing to people.
- For blogs – Many people search for plugin related to blogs so it can also be a great value for plugin ideas.
The plugin shouldn’t have security issues
When a user installs a plugin and if he found any critical issue he will immediately delete the plugin. So it is important to check carefully your code that it is working properly with no bug. Even a plugin working fine but it doesn’t mean that it has no security issues.
- Data Validation – Data validation is the process of filtering or analyzing the data against a predefined pattern (or patterns) with a definitive result: valid or invalid.
- Securing Input – Securing input is the process of sanitizing (cleaning, filtering) input data.
- Securing Output – Securing output is the process of escaping output unwanted data.
- Nonces – Nonces are uniquely generated keys used to verify the origin and intent of requests for security purposes. Each nonce can only be used once.
A simple example of sanitizing and escaping
Sanitization Input - $title= sanitize_text_field( $_POST['title'] );
Escaping output - echo esc_html( $title);
Any time you’re accepting unsafe data, it is important to validate or sanitize it.
Focus on Plugin Name, Description and Keywords
When its time to choose the name of your plugin its is important to keep in mind what people looking for and what people may search when they need a plugin. Your plugin name should relate to your plugin features and should show your plugin all about. You can also check the plugin WordPress plugin readme file standard You can put your readme file with Plugin readme validator
If you are writing the description of your plugin it should be unique and describe all your features but don’t spam some people think that revise a keyword again is a good habit but it doesn’t and keep in mind keyword density you can check your content using keyword density checker
Positive review
When you are searching for a plugin you should always check their number of downloads and the positive feedback you know positive feedback is a big advantage for your plugin. Many people give to support their users on WordPress but they don’t care about the positive feedback when you support the users always ask for positive feedback on your plugin. Try to do always connected to users and give support fast and prompt.
Update Regularly
The common reasons behind to update WordPress plugins are many Security, bug fixes and added new features. Nobody cares to looks into changelogs or diff anyway but it is good to keep records of the plugin update. Another thing your plugin always compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
Conclusion
Try to create a plugin that people need it. Always follow the guideline of WordPress coding standards. Quality code and the bug-free plugin have a higher chance of growth. You can also advertise your plugin out of WordPress. Always give fast and prompt support to your users.
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