WordPress is one of the easiest platform when it comes to creating new websites and blogs. Since its inception in 2003 it has become the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world. The reason it is easy to use is, there are plugins (free and premium) for everything. WordPress plugin repository has over 40,501 plugins available, which are uploaded by people like you and me, who find a need to solve some problem and create a plugin for that. Each plugin has a custom functions and features that allows its users to tailor it according to their needs.

Creating your first WordPress Plugin can be both a exciting yet intimidating at the same time. If you think your plugin will solve it’s users problem then you should go for it. Creating a plugin is a great way of giving back to the open-source community and that also gives you an opportunity to showcase your work.

When me and my co-founder (and husband) Himanshu Patel, launched LnkSocial.com, our users started growing and we were overwhelmed with the number of articles we were getting in the platform. That’s when we found the need of creating a WordPress plugin for it so that its easier for our users to submit articles.

Overview About LnkSocial.com

LnkSocial is a free platform which lets your submit your content to the platform for pre-defined credits (can be earned by sharing other posts from LnkSocial). When you submit a content to LnkSocial you provide your content an option to be distributed organically by established users on their social media profiles. This not only increases your social authority but also increases your website traffic. By sharing an article they can curate better content on their streams and their readers.

For users to submit a new post in LnkSocial they have to come to the website and create a new post. We were getting a lot of posts every day and that made us think about creating a plugin which will let users to submit posts directly from their WordPress website. As soon as a post is published on the website it will go into LnkSocial.

Plugin Submission Experience

Since we were determined that we want to launch the plugin, we hired a WordPress developer, presented the idea of what we wanted and within few weeks of hard work our plugin was ready. After it was ready we had to take it to the WordPress Plugin Directory so our users can start taking advantage of it. Since it was our first WordPress plugin, we faced some challenges! We had to go back and forth between designing, developing and uploading the plugin. I will share my experience and all the steps I took to submit my first plugin to WordPress repository.

Tutorial: How To Add Your First Plugin To WordPress Repo

The first thing you need to get started is a plugin which is fully functional and will solve user’s problem. Once you have done that you are done with the hard part and rest is all pretty simple. To upload a plugin you will need to create a free WordPress account. If you are already registered you can go to add your plugin page and begin the process.

To upload your plugin you need to create a zip file which includes a readme.txt file, your plugin and an assets folder with all the images.

1. Readme.txt

Readme.txt is a very important file in the folder and will contain all the details about your plugin including the plugin name, contributor, website, plugin description, installation, FAQs and changelog. Here’s a sample ReadMe.txt file that you can use for your reference or alternatively you can use this plugin GenerateWP Plugin Readme Generator to generate your readme.txt file.

This is what my readme.txt looks like:

This is what my readme.txt looks like:

=== LnkSocial – Social Sharing Plugin ===

Contributors: LnkSocial
Tags: social media, marketing, content marketing, SEO, viral marketing
Donate link: http://www.lnksocial.com
Requires at least: 3.1
Tested up to: 4.5
Stable tag: 1.1
License: GPLv2 or later
License URI: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html

Share your posts directly from your WordPress blog to LnkSocial account for influencers to share it on their social media.

== Description ==

Social Media Marketing and Content Marketing are an integral part of any online business’s marketing strategy. LnkSocial is a platform where you can submit your content and other users with established social media will share it on their profiles. That way your content will be organically shared by people for free.

With this plugin, you do not need to go to LnkSocial’s website to submit a post. This plugin will automatically submit the posts for you once you publish it on your blog.

This guide will show you how to use LnkSocial’s WordPress Plugin For Content Marketing: https://www.debongo.com/lnksocial-wordpress-plugin/

Once you setup the plugin from the settings page it will automatically submit posts to your LnkSocial account for other influencers to share it.

== Installation ==

This section describes how to install the plugin and get it working:
– You can install the plugin from WordPress Plugin Page by searching for “LnkSocial – Social Sharing Plugin”.
– You can also download and then upload the entire “LnkSocial – Social Sharing Plugin” folder to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
– Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress – Go to Settings -> LnkSocial and enter your login credentials and your unique WordPress Token.
– Once you are logged in, setup your defaults and save it.
– After everything is setup, you can directly go to “Add new Post” page and start working as usual.

Once you publish the post it will automatically go to your waiting queue in LnkSocial

== Frequently Asked Questions ==

= Do I Need A LnkSocial account to use this plugin? =
Yes, you need to go to LnkSocial.com and register for free to use this plugin.

= Will my post go to ‘Pending’ status if I submit using the plugin? =
Yes, all posts submit by plugin or not go through a review before they are approved by our moderators. We only want high value content that other users will love to read.

= How do I select what category my posts will go and how much credits will I spend on each post? =
You can find all the default selections in the Settings -> LnkSocial page. Whatever you choose there will remain as your post’s defaults until you go and change it.

= Can I skip a post from going to LnkSocial’s website? =
Yes, you can. To do that when you are creating the post, you will see a check box for LnkSocial on the right, uncheck that and the post will not to to LnkSocial.com

= Do you guarantee traffic by using your plugin? =
No, no one can guarantee traffic. It all depends on the quality of the content you submit. If its high value content users will share it.

= What about support? =
Create a support ticket at WordPress forum and we will try to fix it ASAP.

== Screenshots ==

1. Login Page For Plugin
2. Plugin’s Default Settings Page
3. Check box to allow/disallwow submitting post To lnkSocial

== Changelog ==

1.1 – Plugin Launched. Submit your blog posts directly from WordPress To LnkSocial Website

Once your readme.txt is ready, verify it with this official validator. When I did mine it gave me a note saying: “No == Upgrade Notice == section was found”. But upgrade note is not really necessary so I moved forward ignoring that note.

2. Assets Folder

Now its time to prepare your assets folder. This will include the screenshots of your plugin which are referenced in your readme.txt file. I have added three screenshots : Login Page For Plugin, Plugin’s Default Settings Page and Check box to allow/disallow submitting post To LnkSocial.

Banner: Along with the screen shots, you need to add banner images to the same folder. To do so create a banner image of exact size 772*250 and name it banner-772×250.png . For retina display, which is double the size, create an image of size 1554*500 and name it banner-1544×500.png. Move both the images to the assets folder.

Icon: Plugin icon should be 128*128 for normal icon and name it icon-128×128.png  while for retina display icon should be 256*256 and named icon-256-256.png respectively.

3. Your Code/Plugin

Put your fully functional code file and give it an appropriate name. Mine is named ‘lnksocial’. 

Once everything is put in place, zip the whole folder. Here is what my file structure looks like:

After your zip file is ready, archive it on your server or on an online storage space like Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. You need to do this step as you are required to submit the link to your archived file while uploading your plugin. Once you login into your WordPress account, go to this page to add your plugin.

You need to enter plugin name, plugin description and plugin URL. When you go to this page it give you the number of plugins that are in review queue. This is what you will see on screen:

It also warns you about selecting the plugin name as whatever you enter for the first time will become the slug for your plugin. You can change the name of the plugin, but you cannot change the slug so be careful while selecting the name. This is what it reads:

“Note that the plugin name you submit here will become the URL of the plugin in the directory. The name is not changeable later, so check your spelling and be sure that you get this form correct!”

When you submit the plugin, it will go into review queue and you will need to wait until you hear back from them. There is no math in how long will it take for them to review your plugin. Each plugin is manually reviewed by only two people and the review queue gets really back logged when both the reviews are traveling or busy.

After you send your plugin to review queue this is what your screen will look like:

I logged into my WordPress.Org account to check the status of my plugin. And there was nothing. Then I checked my inbox and found an email from them within 24 hours, saying that my plugin is rejected! I am really glad they gave me the reason for rejection and the good part was it was just a minor name change. Here’s the email I received from them.

It reads:

Your plugin has been rejected because you used ‘plugin’ in the submitted name, and we are no longer accepting plugins with ‘plugin’ as a defining term in the slug.

That is because your plugin URL would have been wordpress.org/plugins/your-code-plugin (for example) which is rather redundant. If you have a plugin in the WordPress.org Plugins Directory announcing it’s a plugin, that’s overkill.

Keep in mind, this is NOT the same as your display name! The name you use when you submit a plugin becomes the URL: wordpress.org/plugins/YOURPLUGIN Meanwhile, the name that displays on that page is up to you in your readme.

Please resubmit this plugin without ‘plugin’ in the name and we will review it. http://wordpress.org/plugins/add/

If you feel this was in error, please reply to this email with your plugin attached as a zip and explain why you feel your plugin should be an exception.

All I had to do was to not add the word “Plugin” in my plugin’s name as that would become the slug for my plugin. By default the URL will have “plugins” word in the slug and adding it in the name will redundant. So I repeated the same steps, just a minor name change, and this is what it looks like:

With this submission the number of plugins in the waiting queue had crossed 100. It was Friday, so I expected the reply by Monday which turned out right. I got an email with my plugin’s update saying it need to make some changes in the naming of functions and classes in the code so that it doesn’t conflict with other plugins. Here is what the email read:

There are issues with your plugin code. Please read this ENTIRE email, address all listed issues, and reply to this email with your corrected code attached. It is required for you to read and reply to these emails, and failure to do so will result in significant delays with your plugin being accepted.

## Generic function (and/or define) names

All plugins should have unique function names, defines, and classnames. This will prevent your plugin from conflicting with other plugins or themes.

For example, if your plugin is called “Easy Custom Post Types”, then you might prefix your functions with ecpt_{your function name here}. Similarly a define of LICENSE would be better done as ECPT_LICENSE. You can use namespaces instead, however make sure that those also are unique. A namespace or class of ‘MyPlugin’ is NOT actually all that unique, you see. This extends to anything in a define. For example …

define( ‘PLUGIN_PATH’, plugins_url( __FILE__ ) );

That define is a global, so PLUGIN_PATH could conflict with a number of other things.

Don’t try to use two letter slugs anymore.

As of 2016, all the good ones are taken. Instead consider easy_cpts_ (from the first example).

Similarly, don’t use __ to prefix, as the double underscore should be reserved for WordPress itself.

Please update your plugin to use more unique names.

Some Examples: function your_admin_notice

If those are intended to be in shared libraries, please detect IF the code is already included and not re-include it, as doing so will cause conflicts if two people call the same defines and functions.

—-

Please make sure you’ve addressed ALL issues brought up in this email. When you’ve corrected your code, reply to this email with the updated code attached as a zip, or provide a link to the new code for us to review. If you have questions, concerns, or need clarification, please reply to this email and just ask us.

(While we have tried to make this review as exhaustive as possible we, like you, are humans and may have missed things. As such, we will re-review the ENTIRE plugin when you send it back to us. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this.)

After I received this email, I had my developer make necessary changes to the code and upload it on the server. It took him around 1 day to finish updating the code. Once that was done, I replied back to the email with the link to my plugin. Within 24 hours I received an email stating:

We missed a security issue.

## Please sanitize, escape, and validate your POST calls

When you include POST/GET/REQUEST calls in your plugin, it’s important to sanitize, validate, and escape them. The goal here is to prevent a user from accidentally sending trash data through the system, as well as protecting them from potential security issues.

SANITIZE: All instances where generated content is inserted into the database, or into a file, or being otherwise processed by WordPress, the data MUST be properly sanitized for security. By sanitizing your POST data when used to make action calls or URL redirects, you will lessen the possibility of XSS vulnerabilities. You should never have a raw data inserted into the database, even by a update function, and even with a prepare() call.

VALIDATE: In addition to sanitization, you should validate all your calls. If a $_POST call should only be a number, ensure it’s an int() before you pass it through anything. Even if you’re sanitizing or using WordPress functions to ensure things are safe, we ask you please validate for sanity’s sake. Any time you are adding data to the database, it should be the right data.

ESCAPE: Similarly, when you’re outputting data, make sure to escape it properly, so it can’t hijack admin screens. There are many esc_*() functions you can use to make sure you don’t show people the wrong data.

In all cases, using strip slashes or strip_tags is not enough. You need to use the most appropriate method associated with the type of content you’re processing. Check that a URL is a URL and don’t just be lazy and use sanitize_text please. The ultimate goal is that you should ensure that invalid and unsafe data is NEVER processed or displayed. Clean everything, check everything, escape everything, and never trust the users to always have input sane data.

Please review this document and update your code accordingly:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Validating_Sanitizing_and_Escaping_User_Data

Example:

$meta_box_checkbox_value = “”;
if(isset($_POST[“LnkSocial_Permission”]))
  {
   $meta_box_checkbox_value = $_POST[“LnkSocial_Permission”];
   }
update_post_meta($post_id, “LnkSocial_Permission”, $meta_box_checkbox_value);

— Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

We made necessary changes and upload the plugin again. I received the response in 48 hours and yay, my plugin was approved!!

Once your plugin is approved, you will receive a response from the WordPress Plugin team, which looks something like this:

Your plugin hosting request has been approved.

Within one hour, you will have access to your SVN repository at

https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/

with your WordPress.org username and password (the same one you use on the forums).

Here’s some handy links to help you get started.

Enjoy!

Next step is to get your plugin ready for the SVN repository. To that there are tools available:

Before we get started, I will briefly explain the folder structure. I have named the main folder “lnksocial-social-sharing”. Then in that folder are three subfolders: “branches”, “tags”, and “trunk”. This is how these folders are used:

  • Branches: to release major updates,
  • Tags: to release minor updates,
  • Trunk: your beta version where you play with the new features.

So put your current version of the plugin in the trunk folder. The reason behind using these folders is you can revert back to the older version if there are any bugs found.

To get started with this process you need to begin by entering your WordPress.org’s login credentials and your unique SVN link you received from WordPress repo (in the email). Once you see the screen with your files, right-click on the folder name and click “SVN Checkout”.

This will let you save the directory on your local computer. So by doing this you are downloading a copy for yourself to make changes in the local folder. This is how the folder structure on your local PC will look like.

Upload all your images in the assets folder and your plugin files in the trunk folder. This is how my trunk folder looks like:

Whenever you are done with the changes, you can upload the file in the folder and checkin or commit the changes. This is how the screen will look once you commit the changes.

Remember to update your readme.txt file to notify of the changelog and update the stable version of your plugin. Once your plugin is updated you will get an email notification with the update message.

You can checkout the LnkSocial – Social Sharing Plugin here.

Update

While I was going this process of getting my plugin for LnkSocial.com approved, I developed a plugin “TweetShare – Click To Tweet” and uploaded it to the repository. In less than 24 hours I received a response from the WordPress Plugin team saying my plugin has been approved.

You can check out the TweetShare – Click To Tweet plugin here.