The truth is that a customized WordPress plugin built to represent your brand requires a team that is dedicated to:

• Ongoing support via the WordPress Support Forum
• Updates and maintenance
• Performance
• Security
• Quality assurance and testing for compliance

WDS receives many inquiries requesting plugin development, some of which come from folks who don’t understand the complexities of WordPress plugin development. Here’s what you need to know.

A Brief Background on Plugin Development

WordPress plugins are a vital part of the overall WordPress ecosystem. The official WordPress Plugin Directory features over 60,000 freely available plugins that can be installed and used on any WordPress website.

A plugin could be as simple as a few lines of code, or as complex as an entire eCommerce system, there really is no limit! WordPress is also used on more than 43% of all websites on the internet. So, if your company or services can interact with a website, you absolutely need an official WordPress plugin, to expose your business to almost half of the internet!

Plugin development requires understanding the “WordPress way.”

For many, the idea of building a simple plugin may not seem like a tough task. The reality is that so much more goes into plugin development than most realize.

Genuinely understanding the core WordPress software, and the proper ways to integrate your plugin is critical in building a solid plugin foundation that can grow as your users and services grow. If you aren’t building your plugin the “WordPress way,” it will likely be rejected by the Plugin Directory review team.

Working with a company that understands the correct way to build a WordPress plugin is essential. We even wrote the book!

Do you know how to get your plugin listed?

Listing your plugin on the official WordPress Plugin Directory also takes some experience. All plugins are reviewed by the plugin review team, and if they aren’t up to spec will be rejected.

That’s why it’s imperative you work with experts who specialize in not only building powerful WordPress plugins but also someone who understands the process for review and acceptance to the directory.

Compliance is key.

WordPress continues to grow as a platform, and as such new major versions are released approx four times a year. Point releases, or minor updates, occur, on average, about once a month. As new versions are released it’s crucial your plugin is tested and confirmed to work as expected.

There are also notices within the Plugin Directory that indicate your plugin is fully compatible with the current version of WordPress, giving new and existing users confidence that your plugin will continue working as expected when they upgrade WordPress.

Every brand must keep their WordPress plugin compliant with the most current version of WordPress. If it’s not, WordPress lets users know. Such a warning can be embarrassing and looks terrible for your company.

While compliance is key, the keys to achieving compliance are testing and quality assurance. Besides having a dedicated developer ready to respond to WordPress Support Form requests, do you also have one responsible for consistently and constantly testing your brand’s WordPress plugin? It’s vital that you do.

Safe, Secure, and Performant

Security and performance should be at the forefront of everything when developing a WordPress plugin. Our team is trained on and follows WordPress security standards.

We verify all codes are as secure as possible using the proper WordPress hardening methods within the code. Your team should do the same, and if you don’t have one, find professionals who can do that for you.

Performance is another critical area of focus for all plugins we create. How will your plugin handle five users vs five million? You better have a plan for that.

Your plugin users expect access to support.

No matter how much documentation you provide for your brand’s WordPress plugin, your users are bound to encounter errors or simply misunderstand instructions. That’s normal.

However, they expect help. They want to be able to interact directly with the plugin developer and have their issues resolved in a timely manner.

Once you have launched your plugin, have a developer assigned to respond to tickets in the WordPress Support Forum. Be ready to deliver the same kind of customer service for your plugin that your brand normally offers for your other products and services.

Your brand’s WordPress plugin should continually be updated and maintained to perform well.

A plugin that is not continuously updated and maintained is a plugin with poor performance. Your users will hate that and stop using it. What’s even worse, your users could very well leave negative reviews of your plugin. Let’s avoid that.

After launch, continue to update and maintain the health of your plugin. This commitment will show in the performance of your plugin, which will impress your users. The performance of your brand’s WordPress plugin must complement the quality of your brand’s reputation.

WebDevStudios Plugin Development for Brands

It’s essential that your plugin scales as your success does. Our team can help advise and recommend performance techniques, including advanced caching methods, transients, performant SQL database queries, and more. Your plugin will be capable of handling any amount of traffic and growth!

WebDevStudios literally wrote the book on WordPress plugin development. As a co-author of “Professional WordPress Plugin Development, 2nd Edition,” the WDS team and I have valuable experience and expertise in the subject matter.

Your success is our mission. That means that when we develop the official WordPress plugin for a client, we don’t abandon them after launch.

Our dedication to their plugin continues after. We provide ongoing support, including interacting with users at the WordPress Support Forum, maintenance, security, updates, quality assurance, and testing. Every plugin we customize for our clients complies with each WordPress release.

Are you ready to have a customized WordPress plugin built for your brand? Then contact us. Let’s talk about launching your brand’s WordPress plugin.

The post Your Brand’s WordPress Plugin Requires More Than Development appeared first on WebDevStudios.

First Encounters

After meeting at a conference, Constant Contact reached out to WDS for assistance with building a WordPress plugin that allowed users to capture information directly from their WordPress sites. For WDS CEO and Co-Founder, Brad Williams, who is also a co-author of the book Professional WordPress Plugin Development, it was the perfect match.

“Working with a notable brand like Constant Contact is a big deal for us,” Brad says. “Any WordPress website owner looking to grow their email newsletter list can easily rely on this plugin to reach their goals. And with our knowledgeable team of experts, it brings me a lot of pride to be able to provide such a great company with reliable support and recommendations.”

The Constant Contact Forms plugin acts as a standard form solution. The WordPress site owner using the plugin doesn’t even have to have an account set up with Constant Contact in order to utilize its benefits.

However, those who do have an account with the company reap the largest rewards. That’s because a WordPress site owner with a connected Constant Contact account can interact with certain aspects of their Constant Contact account directly from their WordPress dashboard, instead of having to log in through the brand’s website. In other words, the plugin allows the website owner and Constant Contact account user smooth and easy management of their visitor data and/or email list without ever having to leave their WordPress dashboard!

Users are able to create forms within WordPress that, with a connected account, submit visitor-provided details to a chosen list within their Constant Contact account. This acts as an alternative to generated form embed code that can be created and provided by Constant Contact. There is also some general list creation, management, and syncing available to pull information into the WordPress dashboard.

Evolution

Since our relationship with Constant Contact was first established, the Constant Contact Forms plugin has evolved in form and function. Much of this progress is credited to WDS and Maintainn Support Engineer, Michael Beckwith, who focuses on updates and health maintenance of the plugin in coordination with the Constant Contact stakeholders.

“I feel proud, overall, about the plugin right now, and am generally happy with how it’s evolved and how the team behind it has grown to include more developers,” expresses Michael. “I am confident in our abilities to continue putting our best foot forward. I may not technically be a Constant Contact employee, but I do my best to present them in as best of light possible because I do represent them in the support I provide. My support efforts reflect on them, and I want them to be well-represented.”

Most of the plugin’s evolution has included new features related to the collecting efforts and display within WordPress, such as:

• WordPress widget to help display created forms
• Editor screen UI showing current short code
• UI to customize wording and values for various parts of the form output
• Ability to selectively disable email notifications
• Ability to selectively choose who gets notified on a per-form basis
• Ability to selectively choose AJAX submission support
• Evolved and added spam control filters to prevent false signups and junk
• Per-form styling options to help site owners make the forms fit their site design better
• Gutenberg support
• Enhancements around logging and error handling for people offering support

WebDevStudios pledges to keep our own branded plugins healthy, maintained, updated, and reliable. This pledge remains true to our partners at Constant Contact. We look forward to continuing our partnership by providing the support and development they need to provide their users and clients with a tool that brings them great success.

The post Success Story: Constant Contact Forms Plugin for WordPress appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Constant Contact has been a leader in the email marketing industry for the past two decades. Providing an email marketing platform for businesses of all sizes to quickly and easily get up and running with email marketing. Honestly, that’s only a sliver of what they do. Their mission statement reads: “To empower small businesses and nonprofits to grow customer relationships and succeed.” Now that’s something we can definitely get behind!

Constant Contact Forms for WordPress, a free plugin in the WordPress plugin directory, provides site owners a simple way to add forms to their site to collect data from visitors. For small business businesses looking to get their feet wet with email marketing, this plugin is a perfect fit.

When Constant Contact reached out to us about creating their official plugin, they wanted to ensure the plugin’s benefits wouldn’t be limited to existing Constant Contact users. It was important to them that site owners who have never used Constant Contact could still use the plugin to collect data from their visitors, and when they’re ready, they could sign up for a Constant Contact account right through the plugin.

For Constant Contact users, the plugin’s power goes way deeper. The plugin taps into Constant Contact’s powerful API and makes it effortless to map your form fields to the proper fields in your Constant Contact account. Each form submission can be seen in your Constant Contact account instantly. Small business owners looking to get started with email marketing are going to find the process!

We’re extremely excited to be working with Constant Contact on this project. And with the plugin being released to wordpress.org this week, we’re even more excited to get to work on some of the exciting additions we’ve got planned for the next version. Plus, the amazing support team at Pluginize will be handling all support requests via the wordpress.org support forum. So as you can see, the plugin and its users are both in great hands!

Download a copy of Constant Contact Forms for WordPress today and let us know what you think!

The post The Official Constant Contact WordPress Plugin is Live! appeared first on WebDevStudios.