18 Responses to “Where Have All The WordPress Plugin Lists Gone?”
This page contains comments from the Where Have All The WordPress Plugin Lists Gone? article.
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Stephen Cronin is Manager of Online Service Delivery at a Queensland Government department & has been a freelance WordPress developer/consultant since 2007
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I went to look for Codex a few weeks ago and it was gone at that point in time. I was told it went dead about September 1st and looking at the archives it never got updated after Aug 27, 2007 so that sounds right. It’s unfortunate as I think that was widely regarded as the best of the plugin repositories.
The “Official” directory has it’s benefits I just hate to see it all collapsing back to one or two main distribution points.
Hi Heather,
The dates don’t really matter, but I can tell you it was still there on the 5th December (when I added my FeedEntryHeader plugin), but it was gone by the 30th January (when I tried to add my IFrameWidgets plugin).
I totally agree with you that the Codex list was one of the best WordPress plugin lists around. It was always my first port of call when looking for a plugin…
I was in the same situation recently and while my favorite plugin lists disappearing was very frustrating then, I think this indeed is a step forward. After all, why use several when you can have a single, comprehensible list that meets all your demands ? Thumbs up for WordPress!
Tom,
I see your point and I agree – IF we aren’t losing anything by having a single list. At the moment, there are several things that we’ve lost with the Codex Plugin list.
Great post, Stephen. Interestingly enough, I happened to notice the removed plugin pages the night before you posted this article. I was quite upset at the time, especially since many people had spent plenty of time and effort building those pages and keeping them updated. The old plugin pages were well-organized and quite comprehensive. Updating and adding to them was as easy as it gets, and everyone was benefiting from the link juice. It sure wasn’t hurting anything keeping them around. Submitting plugins to the current system is most laborious and convoluted, requiring special software and lots of time. Unfortunately, more time for WordPress is a luxury that many of us unpaid plugin developers simply cannot afford. For this reason alone, the new system will never be as comprehensive and well-maintained as the previous one. Sadly, the biggest losers are the WordPress users themselves, who no longer enjoy access to all that WordPress has to offer. One more reason to switch blogging platforms, in my humble opinion.
Hi Jeff,
Great to have a response from fellow plugin author!
I agree totally: the Codex Plugin List was well organised, comprehensive (listing many plugins that aren’t in the official repository), easy (only took a minute to update) and gave great link juice. Actually one of my plugin pages slipped from PR5 to PR4 because the Codex List link was lost.
As you say the biggest issue is time. I have a family, a full time job and many other commitments and develop WordPress plugins in my spare time. I’m sure it can’t be that hard to add them to the official repository, but I can’t even keep up with my comments at the moment!
But although this is frustrating, I won’t be switching platforms just yet and I hope you don’t either – keep up the great work at Perishable Press.
Jeff what do you suspect was the ultimate reason for the pages being taken down? Bandwidth/dollar issues or just pressure from WordPress? You are the second or third person I have read that has stated the new system is tedious at best, frustratingly impossible at worst. You mention a switch, what format do you prefer at this stage?
Heather,
I can’t answer for Jeff, but it seems to me from reading through the Codex history, that they decided (long ago) to build the official repository to replace the Codex list.
It’s not written why, but I’d have to guess that it’s a) to have greater control over the quality of plugins and b) to integrate with the plugins page in the Admin area, so users can see which plugins need upgrading.
Both of these goals are admirable (if that’s what they were trying for), but the way they implemented the repository means it doesn’t have all the features of the Codex list. As it turns out there may have been room for both.
When they actually removed the Codex Plugin List, they were just implementing a 2 year old decision. There does not appear to have been any sort of examination of the original goals, whether the decision was still a good idea, whether anything would be lost, etc.
I can’t be too upset, because I think their intentions were good and the Codex is all volunteer based, but it’s just a pity they didn’t think twice before pulling the trigger. I would have liked to see more publicity about it and possibly a vote about it.
Hi All,
Sorry I’m so slow in answering comments – I’ve been really busy lately.
Some good news is that the WordPress Plugin Database (wp-plugins.net) seems to be back and functioning. I still miss the Codex Plugin List, but at least there’s one more quality list out there.
Since these lists have been removed there is a real opportunity for someone to get some serious links by creating one on their blog.
It’s cool, perhaps I’ll made a list but in spanish, I’ll work on it!
Nice blog you have here. Nice list of Plugins
Haha! I’m sure there are some blogs out there that provides and features those worth mentioning plugins. =)
Some people think that WordPress Plugin lists are useless, but I find them very helpful. Thanks for the helpful finds. I love WP plugins and I wish that I could program my own. However, I don’t have the time to learn programming right now, and I prefer to leave this area to the experts such as yourself.
Why couldn’t they just archive them? When I need WP plugins, I usually find them on the plugin authors’s sites, via Google of course. And there are plenty of blogs nowadays that feature reviews of the WP plugins that they love and use, so there’s really no shortage of plugin lists. Maybe this is WordPress’s way of offloading some its workload (to WP users) so they could focus on “more important” things?
I too found the Codex list was removed, does not make sense to me. I checked out the WordPress Plugin Directory, it is great but need a lot of updates. I will keep posted for more update, thank for the post !
LINK REMOVED: because of failure to use KeywordLuv syntax (name@keywords)
Since I have dozens of wordpress blog, I like to keep a folder of basic plugins that I will use on each blog. Why have all the plugin lists gone?
It is nice to have one list of plugins instead of mutiple sites. If the wordpress site has the latest ones listed thier is no need for the rest of the sites. I think most people trust the word press site that is why the other ones do not update anymore or stoped adding to thier sites.