Awesome Plugin for Plugin Authors: I Make Plugins

[chipbennett]

Just read this on wp-hackers. Mark Jaquith just published an awesome - perhaps coolest ever - plugin for plugin authors: I Make Plugins.

The plugin showcases the author's plugins, automatically pulling in the info for each plugin from the plugin's readme.txt in the repo.

I think the first wp-hackers reply sums it up perfectly:

"Dude, so sweet. Thanks!"

[Ryan]

There's a few plugins in the repo. that can do that already. I'm not sure if Mark's has any extra features or not. I installed one the other day. I have no idea if it's better or worse than any of the others.

[chipbennett]

There's a few plugins in the repo. that can do that already. I'm not sure if Mark's has any extra features or not. I installed one the other day. I have no idea if it's better or worse than any of the others.

I'm not sure what the other plugins do, but this one builds the sub-pages for each of the plugins automatically, and pulls in the readme.txt info using the API (and updates from the repo, as well).

The plugin sub-page templates are also configurable via shortcode.

Other than that, I guess I'd have to see the other similar plugins.

[Cais]

I just gave it a quick run through, it's interesting but I think I will stick with my manually updated for myself.

I can see it being very useful to put up some pages showing off your plugins while you work out the fine details of your own setup, though.

That being said I may use it on a secondary WP site ...

[Ryan]

On taking another look, I think Mark's plugin is quite different from the one I'm using. Mine simply allows you to add some shortcodes containing info. about the plugin, whereas Mark's one allows you to totally copy the plugin page over.

I don't think I'll be doing it simply because of duplicate content issues associated with directly copying stuff like that.

[markjaquith]

Mark's one allows you to totally copy the plugin page over.

I don't think I'll be doing it simply because of duplicate content issues associated with directly copying stuff like that.

It's still done via shortcodes. You can display as little or as much info as you like. The whole point of the plugin, though, is to get you entering the info in one place (the readme) and pulling it in to your personal site. You could just block those pages from search engines if you're worried about duplicate text. It's not search engines who are going to be impressed with your plugins, it's people! If you don't mind writing two slightly different versions of every plugin description and every plugin FAQ and every plugin changeset... carry on. If you'd like to do it once and be done, you might be interested in this plugin.

[Ryan]

You could just block those pages from search engines if you're worried about duplicate text.

That wouldn't help :p Then I'd get no search engine traffic to those pages!

It's not search engines who are going to be impressed with your plugins, it's people!

Yes, but it's search engines that send a large proportion of the visitors to my plugin pages, so having the repository ranked ahead of my own site would be bad.


If your plugin works via short codes then I might take another look at it.

[andreasnrb]

Hmm if you want to get people to your website wouldn't a extensive readme file be an obstacle? ;)

[Ryan]

Hmm if you want to get people to your website wouldn't a extensive readme file be an obstacle? ;)

I tend to provide quite a bit of support/documentation though so reducing it in the readme wouldn't be too bad. Some readme's are stupidly short though. I find it quite annoying when people have the download link and they move everything else to their own site. I think it's a good idea to have the most important/useful information in the readme at least.

My aim is to make my next readme.txt file short and sweet to save complicating things for the user, but have plenty of links to more thorough resources on my own site including tutorials, perhaps screencasts etc. There's quite a few limitations within the readme.txt system (with good reason), so I'd rather host most of it on my own site for that reason anyway. For example, I'd like to have a lot more images in my help section which isn't possible on WordPress.org.

Using a plugin to haul in certain information is darn handy though to make sure the data is consistent across the two sites. I've been caught out before by having two sets of information on separate sites. When users have reported an error, I've checked on resource and said they were wrong and that there wasn't an error. It wasn't until many months later that I realised they were correct all along as the data was simply wrong on my own site whereas the readme file was correct. So whatever you do, making sure it's correct across the board is important.

[Cais]

It's still done via shortcodes. You can display as little or as much info as you like. The whole point of the plugin, though, is to get you entering the info in one place (the readme) and pulling it in to your personal site. You could just block those pages from search engines if you're worried about duplicate text. It's not search engines who are going to be impressed with your plugins, it's people! If you don't mind writing two slightly different versions of every plugin description and every plugin FAQ and every plugin changeset... carry on. If you'd like to do it once and be done, you might be interested in this plugin.

I'm going to be re-looking at this plugin ... I'm all for not re-inventing the wheel (just check some of my recent source code ) since I mostly just copy and paste the various details I want from my plugin readme file to its specific page on my site(s).

It may just be a matter of layout and style ...