First of all, why should we host our plugin at WordPress.org?

According to the WordPress Developer Center,

• Keep track of how many people have downloaded it.
• Let people leave comments about your plugin.
• Get your plugin rated against all the other cool WordPress plugins.
• Give your plugin lots of exposure in this centralized repository.

As a conclusion, there is no reason not doing this.

Let’s start

1. Make a request to host your plugin at WordPress.org

You can make a request here. Of course, before that you must be logged in. If you do not have an account yet, register here. After the request submission, wait for an email confirming the status of your request.

Wait for this email (request approved):

Your plugin hosting request has been aproved.
Within one hour, you will have access to your SVN repository at
http://svn.wp-plugins.org/YOUR-PLUGIN-NAME/
with your WordPress.org/bbPress.org username and password (the same one you use on the forums).

2. Use a SVN Client for easier work

If you noticed, the “Using Subversion page at WordPress.org” keeps telling us the commands to add files, etc. It makes the work seems to be complicated. A first-time user would not know where to start.

We can make our life easier by using a SVN client to do the stuff. I am using Tortoise SVN for Windows in this example.

3. Upload your plugin files for the first time

Make sure your readme.txt follows the standard. You can validate your readme.txt here.

After you’ve installed Tortoise SVN,

• Create a new folder at anywhere you like, the folder is the place to store and update your plugin files. (I created my folder in My Documents)
• Go into the new folder
• Right-click and choose SVN Checkout to retrieve the folders
• When prompted, enter the URL given in the email (example: http://svn.wp-plugins.org/YOUR-PLUGIN-NAME/)
• When prompted, login using account details you registered at WordPress Extend just now
• Wait for it to load and you will notice that 3 folders (trunk, tags, branches) has been added to your new folder
• Go into “TRUNK” folder, Trunk is the place to store your latest plugin files.
• Move ALL your plugin files into “trunk”
• Right click at anywhere and choose SVN Commit to synchronize your files with WordPress.org

Side Notes

Upload the files to “trunk” folder without any extra folder and do not zip the files (that’s WordPress’s job). See below:

An example of uploaded content:
- trunk/readme.txt
- trunk/plugin.php

4. Done

We’ve finished the first upload. Now wait for the update that runs every 15 minutes. After that, try searching for your plugin at WordPress Plugins Directory.

That’s all. Well, not yet.

There is some work you need to do whenever you released a new version or edit the files. We will cover that in the next part. Coming soon.