Sat 10 May 2008
Getting ready for WordPress Plugin Competition 2.5
Posted by Ajay under Announcements
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Loading ...Good day. I am Ajay D’Souza. I blog at http://ajaydsouza.com/ and http://techtites.com/. Those of you who have been following this blog for more than a year may remember my daily release posts as well as the A-Plugin-A-Day series. MBA life has kept me busy since then, but that’s another story.
As part of my new assignment out here, I’ll be looking after the Plugin Competition. I’ll be maintaining the WordPress Plugin Competition Blog as well as making weekly posts both here and at the Competition Blog.
With the WordPress Plugin Competition 2.5 beginning today, I thought I’d just write in with a few tips on making your entry.
Firstly, read the rules to be followed are listed in the post. Please make sure that your entry does not break any of them.
Getting Inspired
One of the important rules that we have is that the plugins should be new, i.e. no updates to already existing plugins. One great place to get inspired is WordPress Ideas. WordPress Ideas is a place where the people from the WordPress Community, both users and developers vote for what they would like included in WordPress. Some have been implemented, while some may actually appear in future versions and still others that may not be. So, why not make a plugin to accommodate for the latter two?
You can also hunt for ideas in these posts or this posting in our News Forum.
Offering the plugin for download
Something that many authors forget in their zeal to develop a plugin (or a theme) is its documentation.
Firstly, make sure your plugin zip file contains a readme.txt. If needed, include a full fledged help section as well. You can also put this on the plugin release page on your site.
Next, create a separate page on your blog / site dedicated for the plugin. Posts are a no-no! They get lost in the crowd.
Make sure the page has the following:
- Overview
- Requirements
- Features
- Installation Instructions
- Download Link
- License
- Method to get support
When linking to the download file, one method I follow is to link to a file without any version etc. e.g. it reads simply pluginname.zip. The purpose of this is that I can always update the zip file with the latest version of the plugin without bothering to change the link.
Old versions of the plugin can be archived as pluginname_v1.0.zip, pluginname_v1.1.zip and so on.
Sending it to us
You’ll need to send your plugin to us via email. We will reveal the email address that you need to send the plugins to in the second month of the competition.
The competition is on for another two months, which gives you plenty of time to release a feature rich plugin.
Before that, release a well tested version to the public. Fix any bugs that come up, try to provide more features as requested.
The WordPress community is demanding and extremely helpful at guiding you down your path.
All the best for now.
To the WordPress Community
I’m sure you’ll love the competition and many of the plugins that stem from it. Authors are always hunting for ideas and who better to tell them than you. Please feel free to post your ideas in the comments section below.
Or, you can also post them in any of these two posts or this posting in our News Forum.
If you would like to sponsor a prize or donate some money to the competition, please contact us. Lots of eyes see these competitions and your encouragement goes a long way in helping provide incentives.
Stay tuned and please help spread the word.
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May 10th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
I’m just beginning to comprehend Wordpress plugin development but I’m in this year!
Is there a registry of people signed up or will we have to wait until the end of the competition?
May 13th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
When are the current submissions posted for public viewing. Also, is their public voting for the contest? If so does that start when the final content deadline is reached?
What I am trying to determine is if a plugin is submitted on the last day of the contest does it has as much chance of placing as opposed to one submitted right at the beginning of the contest.
May 13th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Good question, I will make sure these points are clear in a future post. As for your question, if a plugin is submitted on the last day, it has just as much of a chance of winning as the one submitted on the first day. As a matter of fact, we suggest that you submit plugins only at the end of the competition to work out bugs and polish them as fine as possible.
May 13th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
But it is okay to release it prior to submitting it for the contest, right? I know one of the requirements is that it is a new plugin and not previously released. I just want to make sure so I don’t shoot myself in the foot and not get to submit my plugin for consideration.
May 13th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
You wont, you are fine.
May 14th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
I’m going to give this one a go - just waiting for wordpress.org to give the green light on hosting the plugin I’ve been working on for it.
Need that public feedback after all.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:05 pm
[...] am a WordPress user. I have an idea, where do I submit it? You can also post them in this post or this posting in our News [...]
May 26th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
I’ve been looking for a event management plugin. It will even help wordpress podcamps events. It can have registartion, maximum user limit and a widget to showcase events on frontpage. It can have integration with google chaeckout or some some other payment site. If anyone interested, then I can provide all necessary information.
what say guys??
June 1st, 2008 at 4:08 am
[...] côté des plugins, à noter également que cette année aussi, Weblog Tools Collection lance une compétition de plugins [...]
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:26 am
I’d love to participate this year.
I published recently a new statistics plugin (zdstatistics) available on wordpress extend section. And I’m creating a new plugin for multilingual blogs.
June 6th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
I’ve write a post with some good ideas about plugins i would like to have:
1.- Comments to twitter: when i write a reply to one comment and it starts with @ send the comment to this twitter account
2.- Configuration Log: i wish to have a log of every changes i make at the wordpress configuration ( activation and deactivation of plugins, changes on configuration options…) it’s useful to detect the cause of errors.