WordPress is a fantastic blogging platform – I love both using it and developing for it. However, with regard to the latter I find it a struggle to promote the work I do. Any WordPress plugins that I develop are free, GPL licensed and I provide free support via the WordPress.org site or, preferably, here on my own forum. Yet, WordPress.org is hardly helping me to promote my plugins amongst the many thousands of others.

When you visit their plugin page you can get a list of the most popular or the most highly rated, but you need to get people actually downloading and trying your plugin to get on these lists – how do you actually get there? Well, that’s the rub. There is no other promotional mechanism. There is a “Feature Plugins” section on the main page and this might be a perfect way to do this. Sadly, it only shows 6 plugins, rarely changes (and then not by much) and of the 6 currently on display, every single one has been written by Automattic or a member of their staff. Yep, they like to promote their own work, but they’re obviously forgetting about the many others who ensure the popularity of WordPress with their own time and effort.

So, here’s a suggestion, borrowing some capabilities from their own platform. How about a slider on that front page, moving between one of a number of plugins, regularly updated, to help promote them. If the author has supplied a banner image this could be used to really help grab the visitor. Under that slider you could have a list of a number of other plugins that are being promoted. And, no, they don’t have to be created by Automattic.

The irony is, that of their 6 currently featured plugins, only 1 is in the top 6 most popular plugins. Only half of those popular plugins are by Automattic, showing that plugins written by others are equally as important and valuable.

It’s just a thought, anyway.