A Checklist for the Craft Plugin Store

Like many of my posts here, this is anoth­er note to myself to help me when I have ques­tions about get­ting things done. 

I recent­ly fin­ished Pic Puller for Craft 3, avail­able in fin­er Craft 3 plu­g­in stores every­where. But the point of this post is how it actu­al­ly got there. 

The con­ver­sion of the plu­g­in from its Craft 2‑com­pat­i­ble ver­sion to Craft 3 was the first step of the process. Andrew Welch’s Plug​in​fac​to​ry​.io real­ly helped there. 

The process of get­ting the plu­g­in into the Plu­g­in Store, inte­grat­ed into the Craft 3 con­trol pan­el, pre­sent­ed a dif­fer­ent set things to fig­ure out. With the assis­tance from Andrew Welch (as always, thank you, my friend) I got that fig­ured out. I had stum­bles along the way which result­ed in the fol­low­ing check­list to make future me seem a lit­tle more adept at the process. I hope it helps you too. 

First: since there is a Plu­g­in Store FAQ it might be good to check to see if any of what I say below is still rel­e­vant because things change fast on this here Inter­net.

Sec­ond: there is a offi­cial ​“Plug­ing to the Plu­g­in Store” post from the moth­er­ship. Read it here.

The Get­ting Into The Store Check­list #

Here’s what you got­ta do.

1. Make a plu­g­in. 
2. Have one branch that is named the major ver­sion of your plu­g­in, ​“v1” or ​“v2” or what­ev­er. Make the new ver­sion the default branch. You’ll also prob­a­bly want a ​“devel­op” branch.
3. Fin­ish and test your plu­g­in.
4. Write some doc­u­men­ta­tion. I put mine in a doc​u​men​ta​tion​.md file. You’ll need this lat­er.
5. Add a license to your plu­g­in. It’s got to be the MIT license or the Craft license to be eli­gi­ble for inclu­sion in the store. The license you choose will be includ­ed in the files of your plu­g­in. I’m not your lawyer, but if you want to sell you plu­g­in, pick the Craft license.
6. I use Tow­er as my git client. How­ev­er you git, cre­ate a new local tag for the release of your plu­g­in. Or, bet­ter yet, use Git­Flow and start a release of your plu­g­in which will help take care of mak­ing your tag. Try using a num­ber like 1.0.0 for the tag and then ​“Ver­sion 1.0.0” for the descrip­tion.
7. Post your plu­g­in to a pub­lic Github repo.
8. Back in Github, make a release using your tag. You’ll need to add some change log info in this step. I keep a changel​og​.md file in my plu­g­in. If you do too, make sure these match up so peo­ple aren’t con­fused by con­flict­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion. 
9. Do you have a Pack­ag­ist account yet? Make one if not.
10. Add your plu­g­in to Pack­ag­ist, like I did here for Pic Puller.
11. Cre­ate a Craft ID. This is how you tell Craft that you’ve got some­thing that can be includ­ed in the store.
12. Link up your Craft ID account with your Github account.
13. Do you have doc­u­men­ta­tion URL? You can link to your doc​u​men​ta​tion​.md file.
14. Do you have a change log URL? You can link to your changel​og​.md file.
15. If you’ve got­ten this far, you can now add your plu­g­in to your Craft ID account.
16. If you’re going to charge for your plu­g­in, you need to pick a price and a renew­al price. Check the offi­cial page on pric­ing sug­ges­tions.
17. Now that your plu­g­in is in your Craft ID account, don’t hit sub­mit yet, be sure you can install your plu­g­in via com­pos­er first. Try it from your com­mand line. Did it work? If so, sub­mit for approval.
18. Wait for approval. Pace. Check email. Cel­e­brate.

Con­grats! You’ve got a plu­g­in in the store. You rock.

Now, how are you going to update that thing? Let’s assume there was some­thing that need­ed updat­ing. Let’s go over the process of mak­ing the update and get­ting that updat­ed ver­sion show­ing up in the plu­g­in store. 

The Update a Plu­g­in Check­list #

1. Update your plug in and make sure it works. This should be done in the ​“devel­op” branch. This is impor­tant lat­er on.
2. Do you need to change your scheme ver­sion? You will if you made a data­base migra­tion. This schema change will trig­ger the migra­tion to run for new users.
3. Update the composer.json file in the root direc­to­ry of your plu­g­in with the new ver­sion num­ber. If you didn’t change the schema, your local dev envi­ron­ment might not show the new ver­sion num­ber. You can composer update to make Craft check the composer.json for your plu­g­in though to check to be sure it’s work­ing.
4. Update your CHANGEL​OG​.md at the root of your project to doc­u­ment the changes you’ve made for this new ver­sion.
5. Make a note of what you put in the Changel​og​.md because you’ll use it next to cre­ate a tag for release.
6. Add and com­mit your changes to the code.
7. Choose ​“Start New Release Branch” in your Git Flow drop­down in Tow­er.
8. Release name is some­thing like ​“3.0.6” in the ​“devel­op” branch where you’ve been work­ing.
9. You’ll see a new ​“fold­er” icon under your branch­es in Tow­er with the name ​“release” and the release name with­in it.
10. Now choose ​“Fin­ish Release” from the Git-Flow drop­down.
11. For the Tag Mes­sage to fol­low my pat­tern, I would then put ​“Ver­sion 3.0.6”, so my ​“Releas­es” link on Github looks nice and con­sis­tent.
12. Now ​‘push’ the devel­op and mas­ter branch­es to Github.
13. Go to Github in your brows­er and find the releas­es tab for the repo, like here https://​github​.com/​j​m​x​2​i​n​c​/​p​i​c​p​u​l​l​e​r​— f​o​r​— c​r​a​f​t​3​/​r​e​l​eases
14. You should see the tag you just pushed on the page, but the last release is still your old release. Click the ​“Draft new release” but­ton.
15. Choose the tag you just made on the next screen.
16. Release Title will be some­thing like ​“Ver­sion 3.0.6”
17. For the descrip­tion, I’ll do some­thing like this “## Fixed — The /services/AppManagement.php wasn’t using the table pre­fix and has been updat­ed to fix this bug.”
18. Then click ​“Pub­lish release”
19. If you’ve got auto­mat­ic updates set up in Pack­ag­ist, you plu­g­in should have updat­ed automat­cial­ly. Just in case, check out the plu­g­in home­page on Pack­ag­ist. For exam­ple, here’s the Pic Puller one. https://​pack​ag​ist​.org/​p​a​c​k​a​g​e​s​/​j​m​x​2​/​p​i​c​— p​uller
20. While logged in you may see a mes­sage if auto­mat­ic updates are not work­ing. If that is the case, you may need to click the ​“Update” but­ton to force an update so Pack­ag­ist sees your new ver­sion. If you can’t be both­ered with this but­ton click­ing, just set up the auto­mat­ic updates. It’s like mag­ic.

You’ve now pub­lished a release of your plu­g­in. 

Now it’s time for cock­tail.