Abandoned WordPress Plugins
I’ve seen a lot written lately by folks who have favorite WordPress plugins. We certainly have lots of them ourselves, but it concerned me some for people managing, or counting on others to manage, their WordPress business blogs. That concern was confirmed some this weekend at WordCamp Orlando when Jane Wells talked a little about abandoned WordPress plugins and when a programmer in the audience shared concern for the service responsibilities involved. So, I wanted to throw some caution out there: namely, there are lots of WordPress plugins… and some get abandoned!
For instance, did you know that the most popular WordPress plugin of all ‘All In One SEO Pack’ *was abandoned* by it’s creator in mid-June? Management has since been picked up by able programmers, but as a business [or even as someone speaking to business people] it’s important to understand what WordPress open source software is.
WordPress is managed by a core development team and it’s supported by an international ‘open source community’ of independent programmers & designers. The core development team manages software updates, while the ‘open source community’ mostly builds template themes [designs] and plugin features. In theory, it’s their responsibility to keep up to date with WordPress updates… and they don’t always do it. This is understandable as no one can work for free indefinitely and the definition of free does not include accountable. What it means is, unmanaged or abandoned plugins can undermine your blog so manage updates for it and all the plugins you’ve added carefully.
If you’re a business, your blog is ultimately a core asset that accumulates subscribers, feed connections, bookmarks, links, brand recognition and competitive search engine indexing. That’s all potential new business pipeline so you’ve really got to be careful.
Kinetic Knowledge is a WordPress Management Service that, amongst many other things, offers ongoing technology management & advancement.
Contributed by Chris Frereckschris@kineticknowledge.com
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Comments
I was wondering how some of these open source software products do for the creators and it seems with everyone expecting stuff to be free or near free it’s no wonder products, even popular products get abandoned.
Hi Artur. It’s not to say open source should be a concern, just that it should be managed carefully. WordPress is the core team’s day job. They are – very important – paid!; whereas, the ‘open source community’ may not be. They build template themes and plugin features, for the love of WordPress and/or because their work may serve as recognition [if widely accepted] for unique programming and/ or design skill. Other words, it’s advertising so [mostly]they can get hired and paid.