Yesterday saw over 100 downloads as a result of numerous modifications and updates, some of which due to mistakes on my behalf which was mildly irritating. The main reason behind all the updates was to cater for numerous feature requests and bugs reported by users of the plugin.

This plugin – as with Page Meta – was written for a project I have been working on, however there are very few that solve the issue of adding in sub headings / titles and reposition it below the main title (or at least as far as I am aware).

If you have any feedback on this plugin I recommend you post it on the WordPress Plugins forums, otherwise if you’re looking to install this plugin it can be downloaded here.

The plugin quite quickly evolved into a solution that allowed for keywords as well as descriptions to be added, as well as the ability to set a custom page title. If required the page title can even be defined in your page template, allowing for dynamic pages / templates to have specific titles.

Although unsure if anyone would actually be interested in using it, I decided to publish it to the Plugin Directory anyway. If anything it would allow me to manage the versions and easily update the handful of blogs that I have installed it on.

I actually thought that my second plugin, SubHeading would be more popular as there aren’t many existing solutions in the Directory for this. It’s not far behind in downloads, with just over 850 to date.

If you’re looking to create your own plugin and want to get it noticed, it’s recommended that you publish and host it in the directory. Here’s a quick guide to take you through the steps of publishing a plugin on a Windows based system.

1. Download and install Tortoise SVN
2. Request an SVN repository using the Add Your Plugin page (It may take few hours to get your request approved).
3. Once you receive the SVN credentials you will be able to access the repository from http://svn.wp-plugins.org/plugin_name.
4. Checkout the blank repository from your svn account. (This contains three empty folders – branches, tag, trunk). To do this, right click the folder you want to Checkout to and select SVN Checkout.

   

   Enter the URL of your plugin repository and click OK.

   

   Once the process is complete you will see the three folders that have been added.

   

5. Copy the plugin files into the trunk folder and create a readme.txt file if one is not already present.



6. Commit your changes by right clicking the folder and selecting SVN commit.



7. You will be prompted for your authentication details, enter your WordPress.org/bbPress.org username and password (the same one you use on the forums).



8. Now create a tag. Right click on the trunk folder and in the context menu go to TortoiseSVN and choose Branch/Tag. In the dialogue box change the url path from /trunk to /tags/0.1 (or whatever you have stated as the stable tag  in the readme file.



9. Run SVN update on the tags folder (Right click the tags folder and select SVN Update).

Committing a modified plugin / new version

1. Make modifications to the trunk folder.
2. Change the stable tag value in the readme file to the latest stable version, e.g. 0.1.1
3. SVN commit the latest changes in the trunk.
4. Tag the new version (see step 8 above) .
5. SVN update the tags folder.