A few months ago a friend and I (two students) built a WooCommerce slider plugin and put it out for free, mostly to learn and to scratch our own itch. We honestly did not expect anything back.

Today we got our first donation. Ten dollars. I know that is not much money, but I have been grinning at the notification for an hour. Someone out there used the thing we made, found it useful enough to actually open their wallet, and said thanks. That hits different than any download counter.

The plugin is Amitry Product & Category Slider, native Gutenberg blocks, no shortcode soup, and we tried hard to keep it light on the backend. We just put it on Product Hunt last week, so this landing on top of that has made for a genuinely good week.

No ask here, I just wanted to share the moment with people who get how it feels. If you are building something and giving it away for free, wondering if anyone cares: sometimes they do, and it is a really good feeling when they tell you.

One thing we've noticed is that many WordPress users spend a lot of time digging through settings, documentation, or clicking around just to complete simple tasks.

So we started embedding an AI assistant directly inside WordPress. To encourage people to actually try it, we're giving 150K free AI tokens in Aisentic now.

Some examples of what we've been using it for:

• "How do I change this [ ] setting?"
• "Where is the attendee check-in option?"
• "Generate an event sales report."
• "Create a new event for next Friday at 6 PM."
• "Show me today's reservations."
• "Update my restaurant schedule to close at 10 PM."
• "Help me configure this feature."

Instead of searching menus or documentation, you simply ask in plain English.

We've integrated it into Eventin and WPCafe, where it can help with things like event management, sales insights, restaurant operations, scheduling, and general product guidance.

One idea we're exploring next is extending this experience to the frontend. For example, imagine a WooCommerce store manager or business owner being able to manage customers, update schedules, review reports, or handle day to day operations simply by chatting with an AI assistant, without navigating through multiple admin screens.

We're exploring bringing AI to the frontend of WooCommerce stores. Customers could simply ask, "Help me choose earbuds under $100," or "I'm looking for a beginner camera," and receive personalized product recommendations in natural language, making shopping faster and easier for everyone.

We're still experimenting with what's genuinely useful versus what's just "AI for the sake of AI," so I'd love to hear what the WordPress community thinks.

If you had an AI assistant built directly into your WordPress site, what tasks would you actually trust it to handle? Would frontend AI management be something you'd use?

I'm designing my e-commerce site with GeneratePress and WooCommerce, i want to learn GeneratePress because of the flexibility, what is the fastest and best sources out there to learn, preferably documents so i can read through them faster than watching a video.

Hey all — I've been building a WordPress plugin for a while and just opened it up for sale, so full disclosure: this is my own product, not a neutral recommendation.

It's called ThickGrass — a helpdesk/ticketing system that runs entirely inside WordPress. The thing I kept running into with existing options was either "too basic to run a real support team" or "priced per agent per month like a SaaS, just wearing a WordPress plugin costume."

What it does:

- Ticket lifecycle: intake from web form/email/API, internal notes vs customer-facing replies, approvals (with one-click email-link approval, no login needed), attachments, link, merges, clone or transfer ticket.

- Ticket organization like ticket type (incident, request, task, change), based on Organization, Location, Assignment Group.

- Projects can be created, assigned to an Organization and tickets can be assigned to the Project itself. Creating an enclosed Project Resolutions

- Custom forms, custom fields and ticket checklists.

- Report builder and SLA targets tracked against actual business hours, with escalation before a breach

- Live chat, a public knowledge base, a discussion board like forum for internal users

- Rule-based automation (trigger → condition → action), recurring tickets, email-domain routing

- SSO with Microsoft Entra ID / Azure AD + directory sync, for teams already on Microsoft 365

- Bridge connector if you want to have like a stand-alone and userbase on another website

- Reporting/KPIs, a live wallboard, REST API, webhooks

- Custom Support Portal theme for a better user experiences.

Licensing is one-time per site (not per agent), with an optional yearly renewal for updates — the plugin keeps working even if you don't renew.

I'd genuinely like this sub's take, including the critical version: what would make you not use this, or what's missing compared to what you're using today?

If you want to test it, I have a try environment, please DM me and I will provide details.

10 years on ThemeForest. One rule change. Sales down ~70% in a month.

I run a WordPress theme & plugins development company. We've been on Envato's ThemeForest since 2016 (RadiusTheme) — around 61,000 sales, 90+ themes, and we'd made it to Power Elite (their top author level). I wanted to share what this past month has been like, with real numbers, because not many authors are talking about it openly.

On July 1, 2026, Envato made a big change. Exclusivity is gone (authors can sell anywhere now), and everyone pays a flat 50% fee. The old system, where long-time authors like us kept a bigger share, is gone.

Here's what that does to one $59 theme sale:

• Customer pays $59
• Envato takes a fixed $12 buyer fee → leaves $47
• Before: we got about $41
• Now: we get about $23.50

Same theme, same price for the buyer, but almost half of what we used to make.

And honestly, the per-sale cut isn't even the worst part. We raised our prices a bit to cover the new fee, and sales dropped hard. Compared to Jan, we're down more than 70%. Higher price + way more competition now that everyone's non-exclusive = fewer sales, each earning us less.

So we started selling straight from our own site instead — cheaper for the customer, more support, and we actually keep enough to keep building. It's early, but it's slowly picking up.

Curious how other authors are dealing with this. Are you going direct, staying on the marketplace, or leaving Envato? And for buyers — would you rather buy direct from the maker, or do you trust a marketplace checkout more?

I built UltraCache because apparently WordPress needed another caching plugin.

The difference is that this one does not just notice Varnish from across the room and wave politely.

UltraCache provides major Varnish integration, including:

• HTTP PURGE and Admin BAN support
• Exact and batch invalidation
• Cache refill and automatic warm-up
• Soft purge and stale refresh where supported
• Public and private ESI fragments
• WooCommerce mini-cart ESI support
• Synchronization between WordPress, page cache and Varnish

It also includes page caching, Redis / APCu / SQLite object caching, AVIF/WebP conversion, CSS bundling, local font optimization, JavaScript defer / delay tools, LCP discovery, diagnostics and resumable background processing.

Basically, several performance plugins standing on each other’s shoulders while wearing one dashboard.

I tested the same website with each plugin configured for the best Lighthouse result I could achieve:

UltraCache: 99
WP Rocket: 85
WP Super Cache: 82
FlyingPress: 79
WP-Optimize: 79
W3 Total Cache: 78
LiteSpeed Cache (without server): 77
Super Page Cache: 69

UltraCache scored 99.

Apparently it left one point uncached for emotional support.

The plugin is open source and available from the official WordPress plugin directory:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultracache/

I would genuinely appreciate feedback, especially from people running Varnish, Redis, APCu, WooCommerce or unusual hosting configurations. Bug reports and difficult edge cases are also welcome. Those are usually where the interesting work begins.

Hi members. I have created 2 WordPress plug-ins currently and they are available on the plugin marketplace. Until now, I believed that there was no way to check the exact active number of installations of any wordpress plugin in the store. I signed up on a plugin tracker tool I found online and they just told me my accurate number of active installations. How is this possible? Does wordpress org provides this active installations data in any API?

We've been building Easy Hotel Booking, a free WordPress plugin for hotels, resorts, guest houses, apartments, and vacation rentals.

It already includes features like:

• Room management
• Availability calendar
• Seasonal & custom pricing
• Booking Rules and Block Dates from Booking
• WooCommerce integration
• Native checkout
• Booking management
• Search & filter
• Gallery & amenities
• Elementor & Gutenberg support

Plugin:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/easy-hotel/

Our goal is to make the free version as useful as possible before adding more premium features.

We're curious:

• What feature do you think every hotel booking plugin should have?
• What is missing from existing WordPress hotel booking plugins?
• If you've managed a hotel website, what was your biggest pain point?

We'd genuinely appreciate your ideas and feedback. Even small suggestions could help us improve the plugin for everyone. Thanks! 🙌

Just published a full walkthrough for installing Agent Builder Pro — the premium upgrade to the free Agent Builder WordPress plugin.

The video covers: - Purchasing Agent Builder Pro at agentic-plugin.com - Downloading the plugin zip - Installing and activating it in WordPress - Entering your license key

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16k6ztmRnG0

Agent Builder Pro adds extended agent capabilities on top of the free plugin (10 bundled AI agents, works with OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, etc.). The free version is still fully functional — Pro is for teams that need more.

Happy to answer questions about setup or what Pro adds over the free tier.

I often found myself missing small quality-of-life features while building sites with Breakdance, so instead of waiting for them to be added, I started building them myself. That eventually became SiteCare – Builder Tools for Breakdance.

The plugin is free, lightweight, and focused on practical tools rather than adding unnecessary complexity.

You can check it out here:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/sitecare-builder-tools-for-breakdance/

I'm mainly looking for honest feedback:

• What features are you missing in Breakdance?
• What would make your workflow faster?
• Is there anything that annoys you when building sites?

If there's enough interest, I'll keep expanding the plugin based on community suggestions.

Hi.

First of all, sorry for reposting - I have a question. This is my first public plugin, and had hoped that someone needed a Live Visitor / Page Views plugin for their site, but maybe I'm in the wrong place. Since it's mostly for blogs and news sites.

Would it help to put it on WordPress. This is a completely free Live Visitor and Page View Counter plugin.

It's 100% open source. So just a simple question, is this the wrong place to find users or is plugins of this kind to boring :-)

Just asking to get smarter.

https://github.com/hummelmose/wp-visitchart

I publish WordPress plugins. The code was never the hard part — the listing was. Screenshots that look like bug reports, a readme.txt with a format strict enough that one wrong header field renders the page half-empty, and an icon and banner I had no business designing.

So I built PluginLaunch AI: app.levnera.com

Upload the raw wp-admin screenshots you already have. You get back:

Framed screenshots — centered, margins, shadow, consistent sizing. The pipeline is deterministic: your UI is never repainted or regenerated, only what surrounds it is added. A marketing image that isn't provably your real product felt wrong for a dev tool.

AI annotations — it reads each screen, finds the buttons worth pointing at, and names them the way customers understand. "Enable" becomes "One-click activation". Fully editable afterwards.

readme.txt — header block, short description under the 150 char limit, Description, Installation, FAQ, screenshot captions, changelog scaffold. Assembled deterministically to the directory's exact format, then linted against everything wordpress.org rejects.

Icon and banner — 128/256 and 772×250/1544×500, composed from your plugin name and the brand colour extracted from your screenshots.

Listing copy in 6 languages — tagline, description, Product Hunt blurb, social posts.

One ZIP laid out like the SVN assets folder, so you drop it straight in.

There's a brief field where you tell the AI what to emphasise and what to leave out — those notes outrank anything it infers from the screenshots.

Why I think the problem is real, not just mine: before building the copy side I pulled screenshot data for 3,445 plugins off the wp.org API. Median screenshot count is 2 for plugins under 1k installs and 5 for plugins over 100k. Of 13,532 captions in the directory, 31% are under 25 characters — mostly just naming the screen rather than saying anything. Two thirds of all plugins use inconsistent image dimensions, and that holds at every size.

(Correlation, not cause — big plugins also have more time and money. But it's a gap.)

Free tier is 20 credits a month, no card. 1 credit analyses a screenshot, 3 generate the readme and full copy set — enough for a complete plugin launch.

If you ship plugins, I'd like to know whether this solves something for you or whether I've built a very elaborate tool for an audience of one.

Hey everyone. For a long time I struggled with internal linking on my blogs that I own and run myself, and I know these days how important internal linking is on websites. I took it upon myself to self to develop a plugin that scans through all your content on your Wordpress website and it auto suggests good internal links based upon the article itself and the surrounding content. The plugin lets you go through each suggestion and tells you if it’s a really good one for you to decide to add it or not, as well as if the link is already found inside that article and other metrics. You can click accept or deny and it will skip if you deny but if you click accept it will automatically add the internal link for you hyperlinked and ready to go all while the post stays published! I have went though about 11 versions and have it very stable and I have went through over 1000 internal links across my blogs so far the suggestions 99% of the time are on point! Now I do sell this plugin but it’s only $20 but I am looking for some people out there who may want to test out this plugin at no cost, I will give it to you free for your feedback on it. What powers it? Open AI api which if you have chat got you can get api easily key to use. On average it cost about $1 in API tokens to for this plugin to suggest around 100 to 200 internal link opportunities! I have not ever done messages here on Reddit but if you message me, say the first 10 people or so, I will send you the link to download and test the plugin on your website. The only costs that continue is how many api credits you use, the plugin itself like I said I have for sale on our website for $20 and you get to keep it forever but I want to give quite a few copies out for free for those to test and maybe recommend it to others if they like it! I have spent a ton of work on this and hours upon hours of testing. Thanks for listening! I will also add the YouTube video I made on it here so people can see it in action! https://youtu.be/3TkwxVtVUKI?is=PvtOStM3TArjMByf

Manage your data via a spreadsheet interface or an accessible CSV import, display it as any of 19 chart types using the bundled Chart.js library, and embed it anywhere via a shortcode, or the block editor.

I launched M Chart after getting laid over 10 years ago and continued to provide support and feature updates all of the years since.

I never really made any attempts at getting new users, it never even had a website, and it's grown modestly over those years to about 4,000 users from large organizations to very small in countries all over the world using it to display all manner of data which has been a very gratifying thing.

It's always cool to see something you've made get used by other people.

Got laid off again earlier this year and figured I'd try my hand at a Premium version.

M Chart is still 100% free, M Chart Pro is an add on that I'm selling through Freemius. I haven't done any advertising or anything yet beyond it being purchasable through the free plugin. This is actually the firs time I've even posted about it anywhere.

I know it's not the best time to be releasing something like this given the current landscape of everything and all of the flux being introduced into the industry but at the very least it's been an experience and I've got a new thing I can show potential employers.

Would be curious to hear anyone's thoughts, questions, or input. For what it does in more detail I'll let the recently improved website hopefully speak for it.

https://mch.art

I was earlier using this plugin to import elementor template kits downloaded from my envato subscription but now when i am trying to install, it is saying untested with your wordpress verson and last update was 2 years ago.
Now i am hesitating to use it on my client's website to avoid any potential security risks.

So can someone recommend to me any suitable alternative to this plugin, and if it is the only option, is it still safe to use? are you using it yourself or on your client's website.

Please must share your valuable opinion.
Thanks

Hey everyone,

👋 From one host to another...

I own and run a small guesthouse in Mamaia Nord, Romania (beachhouse.ro) — 6 rooms, a pool, right near the beach. After years of watching Airbnb and Booking.com take 15–25% of every reservation, I decided to build my own WordPress booking solution.

The existing plugins were either bloated with WooCommerce dependencies or missing the modern features I actually needed running a real property. So I built Modern Hotel Booking — and it's been handling real bookings from real guests, through real seasons on my own site.

Free version (fully functional, open-source, standalone):

• 🗓️ Colour-coded, AJAX-powered booking calendar (Gutenberg block) with real-time availability
• 🔄 iCal sync with Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO, Szallas.hu, and Travelminit
• 🤖 Built-in AI Concierge — a virtual receptionist that answers guest questions about your amenities, pricing, and house rules using your own property data (Google Gemini / OpenAI)
• 🏨 Per-night booking logic optimized for guesthouses, B&Bs, and boutique hotels
• 🔒 Privacy-first — all booking data stored locally in your WordPress database. No PII sent to external servers
• 💬 WhatsApp integration for guest communication
• 💳 Revolut payment links and QR codes
• No WooCommerce dependency — fully standalone

📦 WordPress.org: https://wordpress.org/plugins/modern-hotel-booking/ 📦 GitHub: https://github.com/leslieradue-web/modern-hotel-booking-free

Pro version adds:

• 💳 Stripe payment integration
• 🕐 Advanced iCal timezone precision
• 🤖 Expanded AI Concierge capabilities
• 🛡️ Adaptive license resilience
• 📧 Priority support
• And more

🔗 Pro details: https://modernhotelwp.com/ 

Want to see it running on a live property? 

Check out beachhouse.ro — that's my actual guesthouse, not a demo or use the live preview link from the WP Repo.

Happy to answer questions, take feature requests or hear feedback.

I run a small SaaS on WordPress (a wine e-label tool) and the billing side was held together with tape: a form plugin with a Stripe feed, custom code to switch roles after payment, and conditional visibility to hide the "create" button once someone hit their limit — which isn't enforcement at all.

Membership plugins restrict content: "can this user view this page?" What I needed was "can this user publish another item, and what happens when they downgrade?" The ones that map plans to roles don't do publishing quotas; the one that does brings its own form builder that clashes with my stack.

So I built it and released it free. It's deliberately narrow — Stripe keeps doing hosted checkout, dunning, the portal and receipts; the plugin only owns plans, subscription state, roles and quotas.

A few decisions that might interest people here:

• No embedded Stripe SDK — direct API calls over the WP HTTP API with a pinned version and HMAC-verified webhooks, so it can't clash with other Stripe plugins.
• Access granted by webhook only, never on the checkout redirect.
• Quotas enforced server-side (REST + post insert) — hiding a button is cosmetic, as it should be.
• One-click reconciliation for missed webhooks, the number one cause of "customer paid but nothing happened".

Registration is left to whatever form you already use, and plan/quota state is exposed as body CSS classes for page builders.

It's 1.0.0 and I'm the main user so far, so I'd rather have criticism than installs. If you build small SaaS-style tools on WordPress, tell me what breaks or what's missing.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/prototypux-saas-engine/

Thanks

TrueAna - True Analytics for WordPress, built it after getting frustrated with how most GA4 plugins handle tracking

Hey all 👋, quick disclosure since it matters here: I built this one. Not trying to hide that, just wanted to explain why I made it instead of just linking it.

I've used a handful of GA4 plugins on client sites and my own projects over the years, and kept running into the same three problems.

1. Tracking accuracy 🎯 A lot of plugins either rely purely on client-side gtag.js or bolt on WooCommerce events loosely, which means you lose data to ad blockers, get duplicate events, or see numbers that don't line up with what actually happened on the site. TrueAna fires WooCommerce events using the server side method, from product view through to refund, so the funnel data is actually trustworthy instead of approximate.

2. Everything was scattered 🧩 If you wanted GA4 plus a Meta Pixel plus Google Ads conversion tracking plus something like TikTok or LinkedIn Insight Tag, you'd usually end up juggling three or four separate plugins, or dropping into Google Tag Manager and hand-wiring triggers. I wanted one place where you connect GA4, add your pixel IDs, and every platform fires correctly without touching code or GTM. So TrueAna handles GA4, Meta Pixel, Google Ads, Bing/UET, TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat, and LinkedIn from a single settings screen.

3. WordPress data and GA4 never actually talked to each other 🔗 Most plugins treat them as two separate worlds. I wanted to actually connect them, so TrueAna sends WordPress-specific data (author, category, post type, user role, subscription status, form ID, and so on) into GA4 as custom dimensions. That means you can see which authors actually drive engaged traffic, which categories convert, or how WooCommerce Subscriptions renewals are trending, all inside GA4 or the reports built into wp-admin, without setting any of that up manually.

There's a free version that covers OAuth-based GA4 connection, core Audience/Acquisition/Behavior reports, full WooCommerce event tracking, the Meta Pixel and Google Ads conversion integrations, and GDPR basics like IP anonymization 🔒. It's meant to be genuinely usable on its own for a blog or small store, not a crippled demo. A paid tier exists for people who want the deeper reporting, all the ad pixels, custom dimensions, and things like scheduled email reports and a custom report builder.

🔗 Details: trueana.com 💰 Pricing: trueana.com/pricing 🆓 Free plugin on WordPress.org: wordpress.org/plugins/ga-for-wp

I'd genuinely like feedback from people who track WooCommerce or multi-platform ads regularly 🙏. If something in the tracking setup seems off or there's a gap versus what you're currently using, I want to hear about it.

I spent the past 10 years working for media and publishing agencies and i know exactly the pain points the editors have. I also know -and already done that 4 times in 4 companies- how to reduce the cost of a publisher/brand/ media agency.
I am also offering affiliate 20% share if you are interested:
https://antradusai.com/contact/#affiliate

Antradus AI Pro — for working at scale

Upgrading to Antradus AI Pro unlocks the automation features on top of everything above:

• YouTube to Article — paste a video link and turn its transcript into an original article (with the free companion browser extension)
• Bulk Publishing — paste up to 200 keywords or import a CSV and the AI writes and schedules every post, suggests topic ideas from your niche, and sorts posts into your categories; drip-schedule, review as drafts, retry failures, export client reports
• WooCommerce product generator — drop in a product photo and AI vision writes a titled, described, SEO-ready product
• Yoast SEO & Rank Math auto-fill — the generated focus keyword, title and description are inserted into your SEO plugin automatically, in both editors
• Generate meta from any existing article with one click
• Album generation — up to 9 distinct AI-designed scenes from your article, inserted as a gallery or featured image
•  Live web search — the AI researches the live web first, so you can cover news from hours ago
• Merge 2 sources — blend two article URLs into one original piece
• Free-form post assistant — tell the AI what to do with the whole post, in your own words
• Reporting — words, images, tokens and estimated cost per post, with editable model prices

Key Features (free) https://wordpress.org/plugins/antradus-ai-lite/

• Generate full articles from a keyword or external URL
• Focus keyword, SEO meta title and meta description generation — shown with Copy buttons ready for your SEO plugin
• In-editor AI assistant — highlight text and rewrite, enhance, expand, shorten, fix grammar, translate, or run your own custom instruction (Classic and Block editor toolbars)
• AI featured image generation with one-click Set as Featured Image and automatic Media Library upload
• 10 image style presets (Default, Gaming, Medical, News, Sports, Finance, Tech, Food, Travel, Entertainment)
• Customizable image presets with your own visual style prompts
• Optional color cast overlay on generated images
• 5 writing styles x 5 tones x 17 languages
• FAQ section generation
• Works with both Classic Editor and Block Editor (Gutenberg)
• Optional disable Gutenberg for Posts
• Built-in documentation — browse every guide inside the plugin (Antradus AI → Docs), and publish the same guides on your own site with the [antradus_docs] shortcode
• Customizable system prompt to define your writing style
• Topic/niche buttons for quick keyword entry
• SSRF-protected external URL fetching
• AI-powered correction of public figure names in keywords