WPPlugins: Commerical Plugins for WordPress

WordPress App Store: that’s WPPlugins, as described by the folks behind it (and by Daniel of TechCrunch). Buyers from the store are looking for premium plugins, and are willing to pay for them. Sellers are developers looking to make money from their plugins.

WordPress plugins are available from many places, including the Extend section of WordPress.org. You can get plugins and themes from there. There’s an area for commercial themes: “GPL themes with extra paid services available around them.” There isn’t one for commercial plugins.

So one way of looking at WPPlugins is as the commercial plugins area, detached from the main WordPress/Automattic continent. That commercial plugins area is run, not by Automattic, but Incsub. I respect Incsub and its CEO, James Farmer, and I’ll draw their attention to this post and to the following questions about WPPlugins.

1. Does WPPlugins have the blessing/support/tolerance of Automattic? WPPlugins does seem to plug a gap (pun intended and apologized for) in WP.org.
2. WPPlugins people “assess, check and scrutinise every plugin on the site.” That’s good. What about combinations of plugins? If you buy two plugins from WPPlugins, are you assured that they will play nicely together?
3. Then there’s the complicated followup to the previous question. Does the service include any guidance as to which plugins work with which of the many themes out there? With which of the many plugins out there, most of which aren’t suitable for WPPlugins?

   I’m not suggesting that the WPPlugins people can check the plugins in their store against every theme and plugin out there: that’s just not possible. But against a list of popular or otherwise prominent themes and plugins? That might be a useful service for the plugin/app store to provide.