2011 has been a hectic year for me and my WordPress plugins. I’ve learnt an awful lot – especially thanks to the excellent book Professional WordPress Plugin Development. As a result I’ve been re-visiting a lot of my plugins and vastly improving their code quality and capabilities.

I  also got rid of my first plugin – Organ Donor Register.

Plugins that have been given a fresh lick of paint are (in no particular order)…

• Artiss PSN Status
• Artiss AdSense Insert
• Artiss Content Reveal
• Artiss Draft List
• Artiss Code Embed
• Artiss Twitter Data
• Artiss Relative Date
• Artiss YouTube Embed

You’ll notice they all begin with “Artiss” – another change which is part of a new re-branding exercise. Some of these, however, were modified early on and will be due a further update to bring them totally in line with current standards.

Existing plugins due for an upgrade in 2012 are…

• Flu Pandemic Level
• Google Docs Viewer
• Simple Social Bookmarks
• Simple Timed Content
• Simple URL Shortener
• WP README Parser

Simple Feed List is to be re-written from scratch with feed duties being all “in house” rather than relying on WP’s built in RSS functionality (which appears to be rather flaky).

Artiss Facebook Link, Simple Twitter Link and Simple Buzz Link will all be merged into one new plugin, Artiss Social Link.

Android App Share, Simple Readbag List, Simple TTIW List and Simple Wakoopa List will all be merged into a single new plugin, the name of which is yet to be decided. It will also allow for other sites that provide XML data.

WP Plugin Cache will be abandoned (as all caching will be performed by individual plugins).

What all of this will mean is a reduction in the number of plugins, by merging a number of similar products. However, all are due to recieve the “full monty” of additions so, rather than adding the odd small feature, most should require minimal maintenance in future. Plugins such as Social Bookmarks and YouTube Embed, however, are likely to continue to have big changed applied to them.

If after this I find some time, I have a number of plugins that I’d like to turn my hand to, including a banner rotation plugin. There are a number available in the market but none that offer what I need (and I’m not being particularly needy either) – it was actually a user who asked me about this after coming across the same problem.