Top 10 WordPress Plugin Developers
As the year is coming to an end, perhaps it’s time for a different kind of “Top X” post. Instead of a list of new WP plugins to try out, here are the top plugin authors – the brilliant people who create outstanding tools and share them with the WordPress community.
The list is ranked by the number of downloads from the wordpress.org plugin directory. Also check out the big Top 1000 table.
- Michael Torbert
961 306 downloads. Co-author of All In One SEO Pack (originally created by Uberdose). - Matt Mullenweg
921 827 downloads. Everybody knows Matt, the main WP dev and author of Akismet. - Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan
775 220 downloads. Author of WP-Polls and other cool plugins. - Arne Brachhold
628 350 downloads. Author of Google XML Sitemaps, etc. - Andy Skelton
449 345 downloads. Author of WordPress.com Stats. Another dedicated hacker. - Alex Rabe
429 705 downloads. Author of NextGEN Gallery, etc. - Oliver Seidel
361 918 downloads. Author of cforms II. - Joost de Valk
328 036 downloads. Author of Sociable, Google Analytics for WP and numerous other tools. - Donncha O Caoimh
246 752 downloads. Author of WP Super Cache and other assorted plugins. - Vladimir Prelovac
244 963 downloads. Author of Smart YouTube, various SEO plugins, and more.
Special Mentions
- Most plugins by a single author : Viper007Bond has 25 plugins hosted on wordpress.org.
- Highest version number : cforms II version 9.4 by Oliver Seidel. This plugin also has the highest number of user ratings – 419 votes.
- Longest plugin name : Sliding Post – Slides latest posts with Carousel effect (55 characters) by dasinfomedia
- Shortest plugin name : mu by Mark Bockenstedt. That’s not WordPress MU – “mu” is an obscure microblog updater plugin.
Notes
I got the source data by using the mostly undocumented WordPress.org plugin API. First I downloaded all the plugin metadata I could get, which turned out to be 3688 plugin records. Then, with some simple SQL magic, I found all distinct authors (2190 unique names) and how many plugin downloads each author has. You can see a selection of the results above.
Granted, the aggregate stats may not be entirely accurate. For example, if a plugin had the “Author” field set to “John Smith and Jane Doe”, it would be treated as a new, distinct author and wouldn’t count towards the download total of either John or Jane. Perhaps that’s not such a big problem anyway 
I’m #37, yay?
#86… not bad I suppose!
It’ll be really interesting to see what the results look like this time next year.
Strange thing abt the data is that Uberdose is still the co-author listed at wordpress.org…so does it mean API catches only 1 author if 2 authors are listed against a plugin? Because the author-Uberdose at 206 should share position at No 1 with the co-author.
Doh, I missed the top 1000 list, would be great if you could add the developer’s 2 or 3 most popular plugins to that list as well.
Developer name (Plugin 1, Plugin 2)
Two things:
1. Damn, I just barely missed that top 10 list (I’m #11 if you go by downloads). Then again if I released a new version of my plugins every day/week like some authors do, I’d probably be a lot higher up that list.
I’m curious to see how many users use each plugin. Since the data is sent home during update checks for the plugins, theoretically that data could be collected and released (it’d be pretty interesting to see which plugin, besides Akismet, is installed the most).
2. I thought for sure that that “25″ number included plugin names/stubs I had registered on WP.org but had never bothered to get around to coding, but after looking at my list it turns out to be correct, if not lower than the real count. Wow, I write a lotta stuff. lol
@ Denis from semiologic.com : I just went to the Software section on your site that you gratiously provided to us — while I was wondering why one would decide to not host his/her plugins at wordpress.org.
Anyways… After clicking on the “Contact Form” link I got a “Coming soon…” message. Then I clicked on the “Redirect Manager” link and got the same “Coming soon…” message. Then I closed that browser window.
~Marcus
@ Navjot Singh : I suspect the API returns the author listed in the plugin’s header (i.e. “Author: asdf” in the .php file). As far as I can tell, it doesn’t include the list of contributors you see on wordpress.org.
@ Wesley : I’ll see if I can add it (though the table is already huge).
[...] Une fois n’est pas coutume, Weblog Tools Collection (en) publie une brève qui devrait en intéresser plus d’un. Il s’agit du classement des auteurs des extensions les plus téléchargées du répertoire officiel des plugins WordPress (en). Ce classement a été établi par le blog w-shadow.com. [...]
@Andrew: Maybe it’s time for a plugin to reorder the WordPress Admin menus somehow…?
Shadow, I just remembered, did you know you could wrap your blog template around your cool Top 1000 list? I have a post on how to do it:
http://www.webmaster-source.com/2008/11/26/how-to-integrate-non-wordpress-pages-in-wordpress/
Then you could add a link to the page somewhere in your sidebar or horizontal navigation, and show it off more. It’s kind of a leaderboard for the plugin developers, and it’s definitely something I would want to look at again. Maybe it’s worth making a bit more…friendly?
[...] created the most sought-after WordPress plugins for 2008. Fortunately, W-Shadow.com has compiled a list of the top WordPress plugin developers using rankings from the number of downloads from the wordpress.org plugin [...]
@ redwall_hp : Reorder admin menus… like this?
I suspect the table would become broken in new and exciting ways if I wrap it inside the blog’s theme. Design/layout is always a pain for me
This is a fantastic list; kudos to everyone on the top 10! All of you guys are among the reasons that WordPress is such an awesome piece of software and a top-notch tool for designers like me.
I’m looking forward to even more greatness in 2009!
I’d like to thank all of the authors. They’re making WordPress a much better experience.
THANK YOU ALL!
@Viper, yeah, it’s the number of released plugins. I’ve over 40 registered on wp-plugins.org, but I’ve yet to release a dozen on them.
D.
I think that Matt and Lester are winners! Matt developed wordpress and Lester has several plugin it means more downloads
I think we all are winners. Thanks the the authors there are more users.
And because there are more users, authors do their best to make the next big plugin.
Luckily, with WordPress it has been a endless circle so far.
@Shadow, *exactly* like that. I’ll have to try that plugin out sometime…
[...] is not something that i researched about, but found a list that was prepared by a plugin creator, White Shadow who created the list with the plugins which had the highest [...]
[...] 原文：Top 10 WordPress Plugin Developers [...]
[...] Top 10 WordPress Plugin Developers: Disusun berdasarkan berapa kali plugin bikinan orang yang bersangkutan diunduh dari direktori WordPress Plugins. Orang Indonesia gak ada yang masuk ya? (info via Weblog Tools Collection) Baca juga: WordPress Plugin Competition 2.5 [...]
All In One SEO Pack is good plugin, He is on the top.
I’m 60
Thanks for the list.
Hmm, interesting. I’m #485! There is a bug, though. It’s showing my most popular plugin wrong. It should be SermonBrowser with 3,263 downloads, not Quick Admin Links with 361. (See http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/profile/mark8barnes)
@ Mark : Okay, I’ll check my algorithm when I have time.
[...] W-Shadow.com han realizado un Top 10 de Desarrolladores de Plugins para WordPress, lo que equivale a decir lo más famosos y descargados, claro que el crédito no deben llevarselo [...]
[...] Shadow has recently compiled a list of top 1000 WordPress plugin authors based on number of downloads. There are 2190 authors in total, and I rank at 843th position with [...]
Fu4ny and Funnnny are the same. Just a mistake by WordPress plugin repo’s name listing
[...] walking and we are moving now to out new flat. I’m also very impressed to be one of the TOP 10 WordPress Plugin developer in 2008 (and he only count the NextGEN Gallery downloads, without wordTube and wp-Table). Filed [...]
Any chance you could update the Top 1000 list more frequently? If not, could you go more in depth about how you used the plugin API? I could see this list getting pretty addictive
The problem with that is that to update the list I have to do one HTTP request per each plugin, which takes a while on my crappy connection. I could update it weekly if enough people care.
Partial API doc is here. I might write something myself next week.