Finding WordPress Plugins

Posted on March 27, 2007
Filed Under statistics, opinion |

One great way to find WordPress Plugins is when you aren’t even looking for them. You see something being done well on a blog, you check to see if it’s running WP, then you have a peek at the source to check for any plugin credits. Sometimes they are there, sometimes not. When not I just drop a comment asking if it’s a plugin or some creative hacking that’s produced the result.

I’ve thought for a long time that a small icon bar, or a standard plugin credits page would be a good idea. Give credit where credit is due, shower the plugin authors with incoming links, and hopefully spread the word about good plugins and warn people away from flaky ones.

I’m thinking about the tiny buttons you often see on sidebars. This kind of thing (from SEOmoz):

Page Strength SEO Tool - SEOmoz.org

I can think of two happy side effects for the plugin publisher:

By serving the image they get valuable stats on who is using the plugin, how extensively, and for what. This alone must be a huge advantage (There is also probably an opportunity for someone to offer this hosting service and run an aggregate plugin use stats service).

Secondly, whenever a new version is released the image could turn pink (or some other preferably standardised color) to warn the blogger that  an upgrade is available. I’ve helped out a LOT of people who’s blogs were malfunctioning who could have just checked the plugins tab to see if any upgrades were available and solved their problems. People just don’t check.

I also think it would look pretty cool to have a row of badges on your footer showing how great your taste in plugins is. Plugin bling, love it!

Any thoughts?

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Comments

One Response to “Finding WordPress Plugins”

  1. Scot on March 28th, 2007 2:40 am

    I find myself doing the same thing. I wouldn’t mind putting some type of icon or logo on my blog for each plugin I’m using just to support the community!

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