7 lessons learned while creating WP Plugins

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7 lessons learned while creating WP Plugins By Alkesh Miyani @miyanialkesh7

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- Alkesh Miyani… working with WordPress since 2012. - My Career Journey - Running my own digital agency, techeshta.com where we are doing 50% work as themes and plugins development for our clients. About me,

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1. How many of you created plugins? 2. How many of you customized plugins for clients or while doing job at your company? 3. How many of you have approved plugins on any marketplace like at wordpress.org, CodeCanyon (Envato), TemplateMonster, etc. or on your own store too? Quick questions,

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1. Brainstorming 2. Solve A Problem 3. Know Your Competitors 4. Plugin Pricing 5. Code Quality & Testing 6. Explore In Market 7. Follow Other Developers Points we will cover today

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1.Brainstorming #WCVadodara Think about new plugin idea

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● Active your mind to get new plugin ideas from everywhere ● Try to understand other plugins and check what’s missing? ● Attend WordCamps, Meetups and live webinars to see what’s coming next with the WordPress

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Even, I can say that you may get a new plugin idea after listening my talk

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2. Solve A Problem #WCVadodara Think about out of the box features

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● Don’t copy of other plugin ideas ● Don’t repeat same feature plugins ● Don’t try to compete big market products ● Follow any freelancer sites to know the problems (people are facing difficulties currently with which stuff?)

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Write a plugin scope first and discuss with others instead of making mistakes or feel that you’re on wrong track

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3. Know Your Competitors #WCVadodara Think about current trends

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● Know your nearest competitors first ● Decide whether to go as free or premium plugins ● Make sure you have advanced planning of next version updates ● What’s your customer support plan?

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Highly recommend to follow any PMS tool to summarize everything at one place

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4. Plugin Pricing #WCVadodara Think about earning plan

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● Ask yourself - “What’s best for me?” ❖Explore as free plugin / ❖Premium plugin / ❖Freemium model ● See long vision (or plugin value) instead of earn money immediately

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First create your store with free good plugins (at-least more than 50+ active installs on wordpress.org) and then jump into premium plugins

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5. Code Quality & Testing #WCVadodara Sharpen your plugin development skills

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● Write comments with every functions, conditions and proper readme.txt to get approval speedy ● Class based coding required for marketplace submission ● Old version support - WP, PHP

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● Proper hooks availability with features ● Do manual testing twice and recommend to do testing as zip upload ● Better UI/UX required always ● Detailed documentation with steps from zero to advanced level

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Think about, Your customer coming from Amazon jungle and using WordPress very first time with your plugin… Now!!!

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6. Explore In Market #WCVadodara Release it with proper connections

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● Become a member of good social media groups at Facebook, LinkedIn where you will get your initial review ● Launching offer or discounts for premium plugins ● Send email newsletters to existing clients

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7. Follow Other Developers #WCVadodara Learn from others

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● Try to become support guy of other plugin stores ● Become contributor of other plugins ● Fork github repositories for new features instead of making complete new one

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And Bonus,

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8. Convenience your clients #WCVadodara Invest in your idea by your clients

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● Convenience to create a separate plugin instead of lots of customizations with existing themes and plugins ● Explore your idea to your existing clients who might be ready to invest and give you big market to earn money