Mohcin Bounouara

My First Official WordPress Plugin (and How I Published It)

First of all, this post is a mix of documentation for my future self and a small celebration of my first accepted WordPress plugin. This one: Mohcin Taxonomy SEO for WooCommerce
Alhamdulillah!

How it started

It all began as a small action to help a friend who runs a WooCommerce website.

He needed better SEO support for his product archive pages, mainly category and tag pages.

So I built a simple plugin (with some AI help, of course), tested it properly, and deployed it to production. Everything worked smoothly.

At that point, a thought came to mind; Why not publish it on the official WordPress Plugin Directory?

I discussed it with my friend, and he encouraged me to go for it. And submitted it.

The review process (not as easy as expected)

Submitting the plugin was straightforward… but getting it accepted wasn’t.

There was a back-and-forth review process:

  • Fixing issues
  • Updating code
  • Verifying ownership
  • Making adjustments based on feedback

After 4, 5 attempts, I finally received the approval email, that moment felt really good.

The confusing part

After approval, I got the public link and SVN link to my plugin.

But when I the public one… it was empty.
Also, searching for it in the directory returned not found!

At first, I thought something was wrong.

Then I went back and carefully re-read the email.

That’s when I discovered something important after re-read the email: WordPress uses SVN, not Git (For plugin submission at least)?

Understanding SVN

SVN is a version control system, similar in concept to Git, but with a different workflow.

To make your plugin actually appear in the directory, you need to:

  • Pull the repository locally
  • Add your plugin files
  • Commit them properly
  • Tag a release version

Only then does your plugin become visible in the plugins directory.

The actual steps I followed

Since I’m using Ubuntu, here’s what I did:

1. Install SVN

sudo apt install subversion

2. Checkout the plugin repository

svn co https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/your-new-plugin-name

3. Add your plugin files

Copy your plugin code into the trunk/ folder.

svn add trunk/*
svn up

4. Review changes

svn diff

5. Create a release tag

svn cp trunk tags/1.0.0

6. Commit your plugin

svn ci -m "Adding the first version of my plugin" --username YOUR_USERNAME --password YOUR_PASSWORD

NOTE: Your SVN credentials are provided in the WordPress approval email (with a link to generate your password).

Final thoughts

This experience taught me a few things:

  • Building something useful is just the first step
  • Publishing it properly is a whole different process
  • Reading emails carefully can save hours of confusion
  • SVN is still existing in the WordPress ecosystem
  • AI can be helpful in go-to-market quickly

And most importantly:

Just go for it, you might end up publishing your first plugin sooner than you think.

If you’re thinking about publishing your own plugin, just open your editor and do it.
Even a small utility can help others, and teach you a lot in the process.

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