“Official” Plugin Repository
March 17th, 2007
It was recently announced that a new “official” plugin repository. This is a good thing, however, before all the fan fare, a few things should be pointed out, as I see them.
First, for a plugin to listed there, it MUST be GPL. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a coder, or a lawyer, so I do not even begin to understand all the intricacies of what that means, but not all plugins are GPL. So this will never be a complete list of all the plugins available.
Second, the plugin author MUST upload the plugin to the wp server, and use their subversion directory. This could be a good thing, as it will help in version control, however, again, not all plugin authors are going to want to do this, either because they have their own subversion, method of development, or are just lazy. Also, a lot of plugin authors want the traffic for creating the plugin. Hosting the plugin off wp.org will take some of that away. WordPress.org is offering noticeable links back to their site, as well as paypal button for donations, however, that may not prove enough of a trade off for the authors.
Next, unless a decision is made to drop the bundled plugins from the “most popular” (akismet, default widgets if that becomes part of the download package, I see the delicious widget is included in that list), the data will be skewed. Speaking of “skewed”, the most popular tags listed on the left of the page there are numbers in parenthesis. Skype is listed first, with the # 36. Click on that tag, you see 1 plugin. Confusing? Yes. Granted these bugs could be worked out, however I would have thought some of the UI would have been better thought out before launching.
Another issue there is not currently a RSS feed for this, only feeds for individual tags. I’m quite surprised by this, but assume that will be another bug worked out.
Finally, as people have experienced with the “official theme viewer”, it is volunteer supported (or so I understand). And just as the other major source of plugin info, lapses in volunteers can lead to a bad experience for users.
All of that said, it is still a positive move, as more and more people rely on plugins for extending WP beyond basic blogging. An advantage I already see is it would provide developers with a localized source of plugins to develop new versions against. If you know certain plugins are highly rated and downloaded, you can test development against the plugins to avoid major “breakage” of a lot of blogs with an update. However, this will rely on authors keeping the plugin subversion up-to-date, and participating in general.
Another feature I see that can be beneficial to the community is the commenting on the plugin page. This very well can be used as a source of support, potentially moving that from the general support forums, to where the author can better track their plugin and offer support (or other users of the plugin if the author doesn’t participate).
Finally, the plugin page is beautiful, with lots of useful info, including the ability to have screenshots and FAQs.
So while a move in the right direction, I’m not sold this will be the de-facto solution, however only time will tell.
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