Lovin’ the WordPress plugin ecosystem

I’m a sucker for simple things and in my book, WordPress (the open source software) is a great example of a simple yet powerful solution for publishing on the web. The last few days I experienced their plugin-ecosystem to be just as simple and powerful.
If you have a plugin to share and you:

  1. register on wordpress.org
  2. fill out a form to submit your plugin for inclusion in their repository
  3. after confirmation upload your code (together with a structured readme-file) via svn

Then boom, automatically;

  • plugin pages (for description, installation, faq, changelog, …) are created and populated with information from the readme and base php-file
  • a zip-file is created containing your stable version
  • your plugin is listed on the “new plugins” page

Before you know it, you’ve got a bunch of real users (wp-youtube-lyte was downloaded 128 times in 2 days) who can rate your plugin and provide you with feedback. And every time you upload a new stable version via svn, a new zip-file is created and your users will get a notification in their wp-admin pages, allowing them to upgrade by simply clicking that upgrade link. Don’t you love it when a plan comes together?
But enough raving already, got to go create that admin-page for my plugin now, as requested by a user. I’m a sucker for real users!