Tag: Create Content Offers plugin

Create Content Offers: Autogenerate Content and Collect Emails Easily

What do WordPress site owners really need? I thought about this a lot when I was trying to figure out my first plugin idea. And the thing that came to mind was actually quite simple: they want more engagement.

Previously, creating lots of content was the best way to get more engagement. It might still be. After all, we always go back to our favorite sites because we expect some fresh content waiting for us there.

But creating content is hard and you need to create regularly just to catch people’s attention. At the same time, more and more people are creating content so standing out is getting more difficult.

This kind of content is the passive type though, one where people just sit down and scroll. Maybe they give a like or heart, but the interaction stops there.

What I propose is instead of making passive content, create active content instead. It’s content that people will use and maybe even use often.

active content

Create Something They Will Use Instead

Engagement is all about interaction. The events we remember the most are ones where we were part of the action. So what we need to do is add some interaction in our content.

One of the ways to do that with your existing content is with a simple checklist. Since I personally find guides and lists fascinating, one thing I thought most of them lacked was a handy way to tick off each item on the list. It would help me check off which of the steps I’ve done and what else I need to do.

Say you’re following a guide on how to increase your dopamine levels (that’s the feel-good chemical our body produces to make us productive). You can read the article, say “huh, you learn something new everyday” then immediately forget about it after a minute or so.

If there was a checklist with the article, you could go through each item and discover what else you need to do to boost your dopamine. Maybe you’ll try the rest out later, just to complete the list. It’s a simple interaction but this makes the content way more useful versus a vanilla “how to” article.

So I thought: why not make it easy for WordPress folks to create this checklist? Maybe even build the checklist automatically, just install the plugin and boom! Instant content!

So my plugin Create Content Offers was born.

content offer

What’s a Content Offer?

I guess your next question is: what’s a “content offer“? In the most basic sense, a content offer is something you give to your readers in exchange for something, usually an email. For my initial plugin version, the checklist would be the content offer, automatically generated from the headings of your article.

So we’ve solved the first engagement hurdle but it’s better if you can pull the reader back for future posts. So I also added a way for you not just to create a checklist, but to collect emails before you show it to your readers.

You can add them to your mailing list and send them new posts, subscribe them to your newsletter, or send interesting offers later on.

So to sum it up, this plugin:

  • Creates a content offer automatically for you. It builds a checklist out of your existing blog post’s headings. If there’s enough interest, I might also add ways to automatically generate PDFs, spreadsheets, and more.
  • Collects emails in exchange for access to the checklist. You can view this list at the admin part of your WordPress site.
  • Gives you the ability to customize the text and buttons in the form. You can do this while editing the post where you want to add the checklist.

But the other thing I want to figure out is if this plugin would actually be useful to WordPress site owners out there. So I’m releasing the beta version of the plugin here so you can test it out. And yep, it’s free!

Download the Create Content Offers plugin here!

To install the plugin:

  1. Grab the plugin zipped file from the download link above.
  2. In the admin area of your WordPress site, tap on Plugins in the menu at the left.
  3. At the top of the page, tap on Add New, then tap on Upload Plugin, also found at the top of the page.
  4. Tap on the Browse… button and find the zipped file you just download. Tap on Install Now once you’ve added the file.
  5. Wait for the upload to finish and then tap on Activate Plugin.

To add a checklist to a post:

  1. Choose an existing post that has some headings already. That means some of the text is formatted as Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.
  2. Tap the checkbox beside Show Checklist in Post.
  3. If you don’t use Heading 1 in your post, you can choose which heading type will be turned into a checklist. I use Heading 2 myself.
  4. Tap on the Update button and then go to the live blog post to see how it looks. You can always edit the text included later if you don’t want the defaults.
  5. You can see the emails you’ve collected in your Dashboard or when visiting the Content Offer Emails page in your admin menu.

Was this plugin easy to use? Did it help you in any way? Post a comment below with your feedback, email me or send me a message. In particular, I’d like to know:

  1. What’s the #1 feature you need that’s missing in the plugin?
  2. What bugs have you encountered while using the plugin?

Thanks and I hope you can help me improve this plugin so I can help you get more subscribers!

How to Get Your WordPress Plugin Approved Without Problems

Good news, my plugin’s been approved and is live in the WordPress directory! If you need a way to collect emails without feeling sales-y, grab my Create Content Offers plugin here.

To celebrate, I’ve put together a few things that helped me get my plugin approved without any issues at all. All it took was a couple of days of waiting, some uploading and my plugin was ready to use for WordPress owners and marketers.

Creating the Plugin

There aren’t many rules you need to follow when coding your plugin. The directory allows everything from single file plugins to massive apps that need external APIs. That said, it does help to follow a few rules, both to get your plugin approved and to make your programming work a bit more sane.

Use WordPress core libraries if available (don’t add your own!)

WordPress already includes many popular PHP and Javascript libraries as part of its core code. It has jQuery, jQuery UI, and even Backbone and SWFObject. Check the others here and here.

If the library you use is in there, don’t call an external script but just enqueue the one that’s already inside WordPress. And since these libraries already implement many of the most common functions you need, consider using them instead of adding other libraries that do similar things. It makes your plugin look more consistent with the rest of WordPress, and you don’t need to babysit another piece of code if it updates or breaks in the future.

Only use code and assets that you have permission to use

Seems like a no-brainer but we often forget the stipulations of use for many of the extra code we add into our plugins. Not all the code you find in Github can be copy-pasted without attribution.

Similarly, make sure that if you do use third-party code like APIs or assets like images, give credit where credit is due. Or just exclude them and find something you can use freely.

Use WP_DEBUG to test your plugin extensively

I’ve now made it a habit to turn WP_DEBUG on when coding on my machine, instead of keeping it off to hide the notices and warnings. It can be annoying but it does catch a lot of the problems you might have when submitting the plugin to WordPress. At the very least, doing so made my plugin’s approval process go without a hitch, so I encourage you to do the same.

Don’t add links to the plugin user’s front-facing site

We all need backlinks, tracking and attribution for our work. But adding a link to the front end of a user’s site is explicitly forbidden if you want your plugin in the WordPress directory. Usually, these are “Powered by” links and similar things.

Yes, they check this and will reject your plugin. No, don’t try sneaking your links in.

But there is a way to add front-facing backlinks: have an option in the admin area that gets the user’s permission to turn it on. It has to be turned off by default though.

plugin documentation

Updating Your Plugin’s Documentation

While our handy plugin template generator will address many of the issues below, it’s still worth your time to double check these just to make sure your plugin doesn’t get rejected.

Use a GPL v2 license

This is already what your template has so it shouldn’t pose a problem. But still, it pays to read the license itself so you know what you’re getting into.

Fill out the header information completely

For the most part, the template already takes care of the details of the header. By the way, this header shows the plugin info that your users see in their plugin list. So make it relevant if you don’t want them removing it because they don’t know what your plugin actually does. Go here to learn more about how to fill it up.

Fill out the README.txt completely, too

This is one part that needs your attention since the plugin generator doesn’t add much to it. The “readme” text file is what the plugin directory uses to build its description of your plugin, among other things. But often, plugin developers forget to add information here since it’s really not necessary as part of the approval process.

Since making the readme can be difficult, here are a few tools to help you out:

Plugin page's images

Adding Images for Your Plugin Page

While your plugin page doesn’t need to have images, it does make it prettier and sometimes the images also help people decide whether they will download your plugin or not. Here are some of the things you need to take note about images, taken from the plugin assets guide.

Screenshots should be named screenshot-1.png or screenshot-1.jpg

This gives users a glimpse of what your plugin looks like in their admin area as well as how it will change their site.

Name screenshots sequentially, like screenshot-1.jpg, screenshot-2.jpg, etc. You can upload either PNGs or JPGs of your screenshots.

In your readme is a section named screenshots. This is used to caption the screenshots you add. See the sample below.

screenshots caption

 

Create a 128×128 pixel icon

The icon is what the user first sees when they search for plugins, so it pays to make this as memorable as possible. I prefer to make sure the icon is relevant to my plugin, like a checkbox in my case.

For you it can be your company logo, something free from the NounProject or make your own.

Create a 772×250 pixel banner

Make this attractive as possible, possibly adding some information in as well (but not too much). Some developers add contact details and their website here, though.

Personally, I prefer to add a screenshot here of what my plugin looks like as my draw for new users. You can use your logo, custom banners or even your Facebook cover photo if you want.

wordpress plugin developer submitting plugin to WordPress

Submitting Your Plugin to WordPress

Get a WP.org account

It’s funny that some people forget that you need an account to submit a plugin. After all, how will they reach you to say your plugin is approved?

You can use your existing account but if you’re like me, it’s probably an account you used for personal stuff like reviewing plugins or getting support.

I suggest making a new professional account for the plugin and registering here. This will make it easier to hand over support requests and customer question later on. Don’t forget to also edit the gravatar for that account so it has a relevant avatar and not just something autogenerated.

Choose your plugin slug carefully

It’s something repeated time and again in the plugin docs, so make sure that the plugin slug WordPress chooses is the right one. You can’t change this later (though you can change the name of your plugin).

Usually this slug is automatically generated from the title of your plugin, but if you reply to their first email and as long as the plugin has not yet been approved, you can choose another one that fits better.

Make sure the file you send is zipped and less than 25MB in size

Just like how we install zipped files in our WordPress sites. And I’m pretty sure that if you want to include a huge file with your plugin like a video, you can host that elsewhere and just link to it instead.

Learn how to use Subversion / SVN while you wait

It usually takes a few days before you get word on whether your plugin is approved or not. In the meantime, try learning about Subversion (also called SVN) since that’s what you’ll be using to upload your plugin to the directory.

Here’s a guide from WordPress on how to use SVN.

PS: Don’t forget to put your images into the /assets folder.

More Plugin Submission Tips

If you need more guidance for submitting your plugin, here are a few other resources I found:

 

If you’d like to try out my plugin, you can download it here. Or read here to learn how and why I made it.

And if you want a handy way to follow all the tips above, just grab the checklist I made below!