I have developed over 25 free plugins on WordPress.org. My plugins offer functionality for multimedia content, site customization, widgets, social media, and site utilities. I published most of these plugins between 2013 and 2016 and have made fewer updates in recent years. I still use many of them on my personal sites, some are simple enough that updates are not required, and others are functionally abandoned. This post summarizes the status of each plugin as of mid-2020.
Supported and Updated
I actively support and update these plugins. I use them on sites that I actively maintain. Some of these have planned future updates that will be completed as time allows. Any updates are driven primarily by changes in how WordPress core works.
Sheet Music Library runs the Cello Expressions Sheet Music Library and offers one of the best integrated experiences of all of my plugins. As mission-critical software for my highest-trafficked website, it is fully supported and updated as needed. A “2.0” partial rewrite is forthcoming to incorporate the block editor into the plugin’s administration interface.
Multisite Site Index is a relatively small yet impactful plugin that I use on halsey.co, but not on the Cello Expressions multisite. It features a shortcode and widget that will eventually be converted into an editor block.
Content Slideshow creates a dynamic and customizable slideshow of photos published on a site. The plugin is active on most of my sites and I periodically use it to create background media displays for events. It also features a handy widget that I will convert into a block eventually.
Custom Highlight Color showcases the power of live preview with WordPress and also adds a moderately useful feature to sites. I will only update it as required to correspond with any future changes to the live preview framework in WordPress core.
Featured Audio brings the concept of featured images to audio and is useful for audio-first sites. While I don’t currently use this plugin, it is essentially a subset of the functionality in the Sheet Music Library plugin and will probably be enhanced with block capabilities over time.
Featured Image Gallery Widget draws inspiration from the automatic playlist capabilities of Featured Audio to create contextual featured image galleries as widgets. I will convert this plugin into a block editor block once blocks have a full-site editing context that can appropriately display the dynamic functionality in this plugin.
Modular Custom CSS originally added CSS editing with instant live preview to the customizer and now extends the core feature to offer a CSS editor that is theme-agnostic. I will update the plugin as required to accommodate future revisions to the core live preview framework.
Updates Are Not Required
This group of plugins are each simple enough that they should never require updates. See Small Plugins, Big Impact for further discussion.
Chronological Posts globally reverses the post chronology to make book and journal sites chronological in just six lines of code. Critical to A Forty Niner’s Diary, I will update this plugin in the unlikely event that WordPress fundamentally changes its query system.
Featured Image in Content rescues users from themes that do not display featured images on single posts. The plugin will not require updates unless WordPress core restructures featured images.
Front Page Custom Post Type allows a front page with “your latest posts” to feature post types other than “post”. This plugin is a good candidate for merging into WordPress core.
Login Site Icon brands the WordPress login page contextually to the site being logged into. This is important for anyone that has access to multiple WordPress sites. The plugin “just works” without custom user settings and would be another candidate for WordPress core if not for the persistent arguments about WordPress un-branding itself. Updates will not be required unless the login screen or site icon feature are restructured.
Multisite Custom CSS corrects what I consider to be a misjudgment in appropriate default user role privileges and allows the core custom CSS functionality to work in multisites. It will not require updates unless WordPress core reworks the user role or core custom CSS features.
Not Likely to be Updated
I created each of these plugins for use on sites that I maintained at one time. However, they are less timeless than the “updates not required” group and not critical enough to warrant ongoing updates to keep up with technological changes in the long term. I might update these if required to fix critical issues and will continue to answer questions in their support forums.
Background Image Cropper is a core feature plugin that I do not believe should be merged into WordPress core. It works if you need it and if you’re still using a theme with a background image.
Chromeless Widgets Page is a very useful utility for a particular use case that is more common than the plugin’s usage suggests. I use it on a couple of sites for dynamic content but generally prefer HTML files to create this type of page. The plugin does facilitate managing an HTML page with live preview in WordPress through HTML widget. It also offers a preview of the future ability to construct complete pages with widget/blocks in WordPress core.
Customize Plugin Manager is a WordPress core feature plugin that explores the benefits of plugin management in a live preview context. The plugin is limited by its nature as a plugin and a lack of core hooks that would allow it to manage the status of other plugins dynamically. I do not intend to pursue this project further and am hoping that other contributors will pick it up eventually.
Basic Funding Tracker is a primitive widget that I created for a specific (internal) site. I no longer use it and do not intend to convert it into a block, but it does serve its intended purpose quite well.
Fourteen Colors is my most popular plugin of all time (even still in 2020). It brings color customization to the Twenty Fourteen Theme that was the last bundled theme to ship without such a feature. I no longer manage any sites that use Twenty Fourteen, and the plugin’s usage seems to be decreasing with the use of Twenty Fourteen as more newer themes are available. It remains a great example as the prototype for color customization in themes that is now a common feature.
List Custom Taxonomy Widget remains my second-most-popular plugin, with over 10,000 users. I use it on my sheet music library and have used it on various other sites with custom post types and taxonomies. It is another example of something that would work better as WordPress core functionality. For that reason, I do not intend to convert the widget to a block or make other significant updates.
QuickShare offers a decent approach at social media integration with WordPress sites. This is probably the best plugin that I wrote before contributing to WordPress core, but it still has technical problems that have made it cumbersome to maintain. I still use this plugin, so it may be updated if needed, but WordPress has similar functionality in core in 2020 making this plugin less necessary.
Functionally Abandoned
Several of my plugins are still available on WordPress.org but are either no longer necessary to use on sites or too technologically constrained to warrant future updates.
CSS3 Transitions is an experimental plugin that was originally intended to apply a newer web technology to sites automatically. Since the plugin was released, WordPress core has gradually incorporated this feature into the admin interface. Most themes have also incorporated this technology. In both cases, the design decisions that go into each implementation are better than the brute-force approach that this plugin takes.
Custom Windows Pinned Tiles leveraged an API in Windows Phones to turn websites into dynamic live tiles on a user’s home screen. While this was one of the best features of Windows Phone and was also included in Windows 8 and 10 for other devices, the general failure of the Windows Phone platform cannibalized the idea of live tiles. As tiles are phased out of Windows entirely, this plugin is now unnecessary.
Customizer Theme Switcher was a feature plugin for the customizer theme switcher that merged into WordPress core in version 4.2, and later replaced in WordPress 4.9. As a merged feature plugin, it should be closed.
Customizer UI Experiments was also a feature plugin for WordPress core. This plugin included several experiments associated with tickets on core trac. The experiments all merged into WordPress core in versions 4.5, 4.7, and 4.8 and the plugin has been inactive since 2017.
Floating Social Media Links was my first WordPress plugin, originally created as a high school project. I implemented it on at least a dozen sites that I worked on between 2012 and 2016 and it remains in use on many of them. I published the latest update in 2013. A major rewrite was in the works in 2014, but it became apparent that the technical implementation was too primitive to keep pace with desired improvements. I no longer use the plugin on any sites that I currently maintain but it seems to be stable for the sites that still use it.
Site Icon Widget exposed the site icon as a widget as a basic workaround for the lack of a core image widget for WordPress. The plugin is unnecessary now that core has an image widget and is merging widgets with editor blocks.
Thirteen Colors re-skins the opinionated colors of the Twenty Thirteen theme, beginning a push for color customization in bundled themes that Twenty Fifteen eventually realized. This plugin has actually never been updated and still functions well on my WordPress plugins site. I expect usage to continue declining as users switch to newer themes.
Closed
A few of my plugins were once published on WordPress.org but were later closed (at my request) and are no longer publicly available.
Browser Rejector prevented users from accessing your site from ancient web browsers, implementing a JQuery script as a WordPress plugin. I closed the plugin after about a year because designing themes with progressive enhancement is a better solution. The horrors of the browsers that were rejected have now been defeated for several years.
Menu Customizer was a feature plugin for WordPress core that I first created as a Google Summer of Code project in 2014. I transitioned the plugin into a community-developed project that merged into WordPress core in version 4.3.
Planned Plugins
I do plan to develop additional plugins as required for sites that I personally maintain. I will publish all plugins with potential for general usage to WordPress.org. Currently-planned potential plugins include: a full-screen gallery image navigation system, dynamic graphical content blocks, and add-on plugins for Sheet Music Library.
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