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I'm a big fan of vanilla WordPress, especially the new block editor, but the plugin ecosystem is a total mess. Almost all popular plugins come with a free versi

I'm a big fan of vanilla WordPress, especially the new block editor, but the plugin ecosystem is a total mess. Almost all popular plugins come with a free version that spams you to upgrade to "pro". They add menu items to the admin panel with different colours so you find it harder to ignore them. They add messages to the dashboard. The look and feel of their settings pages don't match WordPress core. And, even if you pay for an upgrade, that usually means removing the plugin provided and automatically updated by WordPress.org and replacing it with a manually uploaded zip. Crazy. The garbage user experience with most plugins led me to collect together a bunch of ideas from plugins I used and rewrite almost all of them entirely into one spam-free plugin. I did it for my own sanity as a user of my own plugin but I'd like to see more " old fashioned" plugins that are providing high quality code for everyone's free benefit.

nsomaru 7y ago
Have you released this plugin?
- faeyanpiraat 7y ago
  Making a functional plugin for one’s own purposes is one thing, releasing it to the public requires quite a lot more work.
- sleavey 7y ago
  Kind of. It's on GitHub, but not yet in the WordPress plugin archive (I want to test it more with my organisation and some friends first). https://github.com/Academic-Labbook https://github.com/Academic-Labbook
levosmetalo 7y ago
> I'm a big fan of vanilla WordPress, especially the new block editor, but the plugin ecosystem is a total mess. Well, the root cause why the plugin ecosystem is a mess is the way plugins management and monetization is implemented in the vanilla wp. As oposed to, e.g. Atlassian Jira plugins, WP doesn't really help plugin developers to seamlessly integrate with the core product.
- arkitaip 7y ago
  "seamlessly integrate with the core product." Plugin devs can generally NOT be trusted with seamlessly integrating their plugins because it usually leads to all kinds of dark patterns and poor UI for WP as a whole. WP.org's strict plugin guidelines is one of the main reasons why plugins behave relatively well considering how huge the WP.org repository is.

nsomaru 7y ago

Have you released this plugin?

faeyanpiraat 7y ago
Making a functional plugin for one’s own purposes is one thing, releasing it to the public requires quite a lot more work.
sleavey 7y ago
Kind of. It's on GitHub, but not yet in the WordPress plugin archive (I want to test it more with my organisation and some friends first). https://github.com/Academic-Labbook https://github.com/Academic-Labbook

levosmetalo 7y ago

> I'm a big fan of vanilla WordPress, especially the new block editor, but the plugin ecosystem is a total mess. Well, the root cause why the plugin ecosystem is a mess is the way plugins management and monetization is implemented in the vanilla wp. As oposed to, e.g. Atlassian Jira plugins, WP doesn't really help plugin developers to seamlessly integrate with the core product.

arkitaip 7y ago
"seamlessly integrate with the core product." Plugin devs can generally NOT be trusted with seamlessly integrating their plugins because it usually leads to all kinds of dark patterns and poor UI for WP as a whole. WP.org's strict plugin guidelines is one of the main reasons why plugins behave relatively well considering how huge the WP.org repository is.