Adding Your New Plugin To The WordPress.org Directory

The WordPress plugin directory is a very good place to publish and distribute your new plugin.

Currently this time the directory includes about 20,902 plugins and every days about 50 new plugins are added.

Before you develop your new plugin you should know few rules that the WordPress directory have regarding the plugins that are published:

1. This is one is obvious but we will say it anyway, the plugin should free of cost – you can’t sell your plugin on the WordPress plugin directory
2. All plugins in the WordPress directory  are released under the GPLv2 license, which mean that anyone can alter your plugin and publish a new plugin based on your plugin.
3. The code of the plugin should not be encoded or scrambled in any way.

There are more rules but these are the most important ones and if follow these rules only you should be fine.

So where do you start?

The process is very simple and its all about sending your plugin to review, to be more specific here are 8 steps that lead you through the entire process:

1. Open an Account
   In order publish to plugin you will need to have an account on WordPress.org
   You can open an account in this URL: http://wordpress.org/support/register.php
2. Complete your Profile Information (optional)
   If you want that people will know you better fill as much information as you can on your profile.
   Add any information that can help other people to know you better, like your website and other expertise.
3. Host your Plugin
   Zip your plugin files and upload them any hosting account that you have. You will need a direct link to your ZIP file in order to submit your plugin. If you don’t have any hosting account use any cloud service like Dropbox and create a shared link the plugin zip file.
4. Submit your plugin for review
   Now go to plugin addition page and submit your plugin you can find this form on:
   http://wordpress.org/plugins/add/ (you will need to be logged into your account).
5. Fill in the Plugin Information
   Choose the plugin name carefully this will be your slug on the WordPress directory. Fill in a short description and type the link to your plugin zip file.
6. Wait…
   It may take some time until your plugin will be approved. The plugin directory is managed by volunteers that approve plugins in their free time, so you just need to wait and it may take between few hours if you are really luck and up to few days.
7. Create a readme.txt file for your plugin
   Every plugin need a readme.txt files, this files includes all the information needed in order to display the details on the WordPress plugin directory.
   You can see a sample readme.txt file here  or use the readme.txt generator.
8. Upload the plugin files to SVN repository
   Upload your plugin to the SVN repository address that you will get in the email that confirm that your plugin has been confirmed. This is where you upload you plugin files (not zipped) and any other assets that want to be displayed on the WordPress directory like banner and screenshots.

That’s is your plugin is now published on the WordPress directory, now you need to market it so people will be to find it more easily and download more copies of the plugin.

In a about a week, we will publish a post on how to market your new plugin almost free of charge.

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