WordPress Plugin Directory Guidelines

This is the online repository for the proposed revamp of the WordPress.org Plugin Guidelines.

Introduction

These guidelines are intended to replace the ones currently found in the (Plugin Developer Handbook)[https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-org/detailed-plugin-guidelines/]

The plugin review team has already gone through and made serious renovations in order to clarify intent and meaning. Many kudos to the focus groups for reading and reviewing these, to help clarify them further.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Plugins must be compatible with the GNU General Public License v2, or any later version.
2. Include a license in your plugin with a license.txt file.
3. A stable version of your plugin must be available from its WordPress Plugin Directory page.
4. Keep your code (mostly) human readable.
5. Trialware is not allowed in the directory.
6. Serviceware is permitted in the directory.
7. The plugin may not “phone home” or track users without their informed, explicit, opt-in consent.
8. The plugin may not send executable code via third-party systems.
9. The plugin and its developers must not do anything illegal, dishonest, or morally offensive.
10. The plugin must not embed external links or credits on the public site without explicitly asking the user’s permission.
11. The plugin should not hijack the blog admin.
12. Public facing pages on WordPress.org may not contain “sponsored” or “affiliate” links or third party ads.
13. The plugin page in the directory should include no more than 12 tags.
14. Frequent commits can be seen as gaming the Recently Updated lists.
15. All code changes to a plugin that has a Stable Tag of “trunk” must result in the version number being upgraded.
16. A complete plugin must be available at the time of submitting the plugin request to the directory.
17. Respect trademarks.
18. We reserve the right to alter the Plugin Guidelines at any time with or without notice.

Feedback

If you feel a guideline’s explanation is unclear, please create an issue or a pull request with what you feel should be changed and why. All grammar/spelling corrections are greatly welcome. We’re trying to write these for all levels of developers, as well as people who may not speak English proficiently. Using words like ‘obsequious’ should be avoided (nb: That’s mostly to Mika who uses those words regularly).

All feedback should be opened as issues in the tracker.

License

The content has two licenses:

• GPLv2
• Creative Commons Sharealike

Just like WordPress, you are free to read, share, distribute, and modify the content however you want, passing on those freedoms to everyone else. Cool!