New WordPress Plugin Directory Now in Open Beta

For the past few months, members of the WordPress Meta team have been hard at work redesigning the WordPress Plugin Directory. That’s why I was surprised to hear a rumor that the project was shut down.

I reached out to Konstantin Obenland, WordPress core contributor, who confirmed a number of items. The first is that the project is far from being shut down. In fact, this past weekend at WordCamp Europe, Obenland announced that the new directory is in open beta.

#wceu new plug-in directory in beta @obenland pic.twitter.com/hppUJwaVCb

— @CristianoZanca (@CristianoZanca) June 24, 2016

The team received feedback from Matt Mullenweg which is changing the direction and design of the page. “We’re really just at the beginning of design iterations,” Obenland said. “He thinks we can do better, which he’s right about. We can and we should.”

One of the main features of the redesign is the ability for plugin authors to login to wp-admin. Based on feedback received from Mullenweg, that’s no longer an option.

“Wp-admin was more of a playground for us to test things that we wondered if they would make sense for plugin devs to have,” Obenland said.

“The final version will be closer to the current version where it’s handled in the front-end, though I personally would like to see an administration area removed from the plugin detail page that would allow us to give devs more of a dashboard of all their plugins.”

Plugin authors are encouraged to browse the new directory and if you encounter any issues or bugs, to report them by creating tickets on Meta Trac. Plugin authors, let us know what you think of the new design in the comments.