How to Obtain The Total Download Count For Plugins Attached to a WordPress.org Username

Over the weekend, the Easy Digital Downloads team launched a new side project called WP Tally. WP Tally is a tool that displays the total download count for plugins attached to a WordPress.org username. The project is the result of a conversation about the lack of an easy way to determine the total amount of plugin downloads a WordPress.org user has.

WP Tally Home Page

Daniel Griffiths, who worked on the backend of the project, tells the Tavern, “it only took 10 minutes to come up with a name.” Sean Davis, a full-time support manager and theme developer for EDD, is credited with the name. The founder of Easy Digital Downloads, Pippin Williamson, asked Griffiths if he was interested in creating a new plugin, “I’m always looking for a new pet project, so I happily agreed.” The first version of WP Tally took about an hour and a half of development time. Due to other things going on throughout the day, the estimated time to complete the project is half a day.

The WP Tally API

While the site didn’t have an API initially, one was added after being suggested by Williamson. Griffiths says the API is public and passes the same data that is displayed on WP Tally. While the extent of what the API can do is small, the team is open to suggestions. “We’ve already had someone express interest in writing a widget to allow users to display their personal data on their own website.”

WP Tally in Action

Since Scott Reilly known as Coffee2Code on WordPress.org, has 70 plugins attached to his account, I used his name as an example. According to WP Tally, he has 911, 256 total downloads. Meanwhile, Joost de Valk has a total of 22.3 million downloads from 29 different plugins. Results are displayed in a vertical list without a way to sort them.

Coffee2Code Total Download Count

It would be nice to be able to sort through the list by the most downloads, most popular based on ratings, and alphabetical order. I’d also like to see the total number of plugins displayed in the same area as the total download count. As an added bonus, it would be neat if the information could be embedded into a text widget as a badge.

What do you think of the site and is there anything else you’d like to see it tally?