A different path
Even so, I have decided to publish my plugins through GitHub now. That decision grew over many years — and out of a question about how I want to work today.
WordPress.org made a lot possible for me
When I started, the official plugin directory was the obvious choice for me. People looking for a plugin could discover and install it directly in the WordPress admin. That visibility was enormously valuable to an independent developer.
A website of my own offering ZIP downloads was not a serious alternative for me in 2011. I was only just getting to know GitHub. I saw it primarily as a platform for collaborating on code, rather than a way to distribute finished WordPress plugins.
WordPress.org therefore made a lot possible for me. I have no wish to dismiss those years or erase them from my story.
Over time, the platform became less of a fit
Over the years, the platform felt increasingly restrictive for the way I worked. Requirements and rules grew. I had less freedom than I wanted when presenting my plugins, adding screenshots, or including links.
That included affiliate links. For plugins offered free of charge, that income could be one of the few financial rewards for a considerable amount of development and maintenance work.
I never felt entirely comfortable with the support forums, either. That was partly about the technical system and partly about the procedures. From earlier years, I remember being required to communicate in English even for plugins whose content and users were exclusively German-speaking. To me, that did not make sense.
By around 2018, my wish to find another way had become much clearer.
There is a personal side to reach
A successful plugin attracts attention. That includes questions, bug reports, expectations, and occasionally negative reviews.
This often affected me more than people could see from the outside. When hundreds or several thousand people were using a plugin, a single bug report could feel like a catastrophe to me.
Of course, users need to be able to report problems. Still, I eventually had to acknowledge how much stress that kind of public exposure caused me. I did not always find the atmosphere on the platform comfortable, either.
My business is smaller today. A smaller user base is something I genuinely welcome: less pressure, a calmer pace, and more room for focused work.
The final push
The final push for me personally was Matt Mullenweg’s conduct in the conflict with WP Engine. I found it deeply off-putting. For me, that tipped the balance toward acting on a decision that had been taking shape for a long time.
From the outside, my departure may therefore look primarily political. But the reasons go back much further. The platform had been becoming less suited to my needs for years.
I also no longer wanted to depend on decisions about plugin suspensions and consequences that I found difficult to predict. I increasingly experienced the guidelines as a rigid set of rules within which I no longer felt comfortable doing my work.
Changes to my plugin translations were another concern. On several occasions, I saw wording changed without an understanding of the architectural decisions behind it. I want to be able to review and take responsibility for such changes in the context of the whole plugin.
Why GitHub suits me better today
I find working on GitHub faster, more pleasant, and less restrictive. I can organize code, documentation, screenshots, and releases in a way that fits my projects.
GitHub is another company’s platform, with its own terms of service. It is not perfect, either. But it is a better fit for the current scale of my business, my plugin development, and my client work.
I understand the price of that choice: I give up the significant opportunity for discovery through the WordPress.org plugin installer. I accept that disadvantage deliberately.
With my own website, detailed documentation, the deckerweb Updater, and the deckerweb Library, I am now building a different way for people to discover and use my plugins.
A personal decision
There is something I want to make very clear: I had no personal conflict with the staff or volunteers at WordPress.org. I was treated kindly in my direct interactions with them. My decision is not directed against those people or their work.
I chose this path myself.
I would not rule out ever publishing another plugin on WordPress.org. For the foreseeable future, though, my reasons for distributing my projects elsewhere carry more weight.
I still enjoy developing for WordPress. I want to build useful tools, document them well, and be able to maintain them over the long term. To do that, I need a way of working that suits me as a person, too.
Right now, I find that on GitHub.