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Jeff Chandler

Tips For Promoting Newly Released WordPress Plugins

So you just created and released a cool WordPress plugin that solves a problem. It’s now among 29,000 other plugins on the plugin directory. How do you tell the world your plugin exists? WordPress.org doesn’t have an area to publish press releases or announcements of new plugins.

photo credit: jono dot com - cc
photo credit: jono dot com – cc

However, all plugins published to the repository show up on the newest plugins list. This list has an RSS feed but you have to know where to look to subscribe to it. In WordPress 3.8, the dashboard widget showing the newest plugins released was removed.

News Plugins Released On WordPress.org
News Plugins Released On WordPress.org

If Your Plugin Solves a Problem, We Want To Hear About It

The best way to get your plugin noticed is to contact authors of websites that primarily focus on WordPress. For example, you can contact us. When pitching your plugin, don’t pretend it’s a sales pitch. Provide the name of the plugin, it’s target audience and the problem it solves. There is no guarantee that WPTavern or any other website will write about your plugin, even if that information is provided. But it’s worth a shot.

When we write about plugins on WPTavern, they’re either cool, innovative, or solve a problem for a large number of users. One of the hardest things to do as a writer is to write about something that is not interesting. The plugins reviewed on WPTavern are seen by a huge audience. I love hearing stories from new plugin authors of how an article on WPTavern put their plugin on the map.

WordPress Podcast Dedicated To Plugins

Plugins A-Z is a podcast dedicated to WordPress plugins. Hosted by Marcus Couch and John Overall, they discuss new plugins that have caught their eye. You can get in touch with them via their contact form. Don’t only submit information about your plugin, but extend an offer to be on their show as a guest. Who knows a plugin better than the person who created it?

Subreddit Dedicated To WordPress Plugins

Reddit LogoA few weeks ago, we mentioned Reddit was a good place to hang out if you enjoyed discussing WordPress topics. There is a subreddit available dedicated to WordPress plugins. Developers are welcome to show off their plugins for feedback and offer custom development services when needed.

Plugin Developers Are Problem Solvers

In general, plugin developers are not looking for fame. Most plugins are solutions to a problem or scratch a developer’s itch. By releasing a plugin into the wild, the hope is it will solve the same problem for others. Thank you to every plugin developer who has placed their code onto the WordPress.org plugin repository. More often then not, those plugins are solutions to problems.

If you know any other outlets authors can use to promote their new plugins, please share them in the comments.

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18 responses to “Tips For Promoting Newly Released WordPress Plugins”

  1. If you’re a startup doing something fairly unique, there’s always my Startup Challenge web show to apply to. Somewhere along the line, I may ask you for an interview for my normal podcast. If your plugin has a strong alternative, we may cover it on our show PressThis.

    Lastly, but surely not least, I will also do a review/unboxing on my blog if you contact me directly and certain criteria is met.

    I know there’s other WP outlets out there that will also do reviews — best to reach out to all of us :)

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  3. Hi Jeffro,

    This is actually a really good starting point for plugin developers. They can probably also get involved in the community via social media and share it there as well. Perhaps share it on managewp.org as well.

    Trip back in time: I have a draft post from 2007 outlining how to promote your plugin. It basically said to post an item in the news section of weblogtoolscollection and to submit your plugin to the various plugin lists / repositories that existed at the time. I never published it because most of the repositories went under not long after (I did write about that in Feb 2008!). Man those were the days…

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  5. Thanks for this Jeff, I tend to review plugins and themes from a consumer point of view. I’m no techie but getting there!

    If anyone needs a theme or plugin reviewed for some exposure etc then drop me an email on ben (at) wpin.me ;-)

    I only give honest feedback and could help developers enhance a plugin or theme from a user perspective!

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  6. Been wanting to get the word out about my plugin but most importantly get some really good and constructive criticism on it in the hope of improving on it.

    Never knew where to look or go for that but thanks to this post, I now have some very good places and people to approach :)

    Thank Jeff for highlighting this and all those chipping in with details of where to be found :)

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  7. Hi Jeff,

    Thank you for your article, it features some really important tips for promoting the plugin. I added Plugins A-Z to my list to contact them.

    I have had an experience of plugin promotion, and I can say that the best way to share your WordPress product and make it popular is to share it with the WP community on developer forums and websites, and if your product is really worthwhile WP users and developers will spread the word about it. If you plugin needs some additional development they will point what exactly has to be done.

    And when you got a good feedback and you are sure that your plugin is good you can try to sell it on deals sites, where thanks to the discounts users are more interested to purchase the plugin and try it.

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  9. I released a new free WordPress plugin shortly after reading this post here, so of course I tried out some of the suggestions given here. This is how it went:

    – Contact WPtavern: No response so far. I did not expect the world here and know you are busy but still just a short 1-liner a la “Thanks for your submission and we will consider it” would give the whole submission thing a much nicer feel, especially since you suggest it here. :)

    – Submit to reddit: My link there got 4 clicks, 3 upvotes and 1 comment. In general the r/WordpressPlugins subreddit is very empty and only has 400 subscribers. If you have a reddit account (as I did) it is worth a shot, otherwise I would not bother. r/Wordpress is much bigger (> 15000 subscribers) but does not allow self-promotional posts by plugin authors unfortunately.

    – Contact other WP news sites and blogs: I sent a short message to several other sites, including the ones that have replied in the comments here. Results were mixed of course, with some not replying, some quick “we will check it out” answers but some positive results too. Definitely worth a shot – as everything in life it will work much better if you already have some contacts and know people (Most positive answers I got were from people I was in contact with before)

    – Comment on old on-topic posts: Another thing I did that is not mentioned here yet. Simply search Google for posts related to what your plugin does and leave a short comment. Results probably won’t be impressive but it can get the word out there a big (to the site owners as well as people finding the posts in search).

    My plugin in question is WP Inject (http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-inject/), a tool to quickly find and insert free creative commons images and as such already something that could be useful to a lot of bloggers. For a more niche plugin it would be even harder to get some traction I would imagine.

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  12. Thanks for the great article – our main plugin is not new, but we are constantly trying to promote it. Some of the points were known to us, some were new and interesting info, especially regarding “Plugins A to Z” – we’ve contacted them right away, hopefully they will review our plugin. :)

    Also tried to contact WPTavern several times to get reviewed, but unfortunately no feedback till now :(

    As for the topic, we also recently published a similar article on our blog, but it’s more related to the process of commercial plugin development: 12 Tips for Creating a succesful WordPress Plugin or Theme – hopefully somebody can find it useful.

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