There is a new WordPress.org naming policy that prevents plugins from using the names of companies and other plugins as the first item in the name and slug.
For instance, if a reader submitted, “Post Status Extender Widget” to the repo it wouldn’t be accepted but, “Extender Widget for Post Status” would.
Here’s the full text of the policy, delivered to a reader by email:
You don’t appear to work for WooCommerce and, as such, we can no longer accept your plugin with ‘Woocommerce’ as the first term in your slug.
We’re no longer accepting plugins that include a trademarked product name or term as the name or slug of a plugin. Nor are we accepting plugins that include the name of another plugin at the beginning of the name/slug.
The slug for your plugin is generated based on the name you enter on the app plugin page, with hypens inserted in place of spaces. This means if you were to name your plugin “My Really Cool Cookie Jam” then your URL on WordPress.org would be http://wordpress.org/plugins/my-really-cool-cookie-jam
This becomes a larger issue when plugins use the names of other plugins in their own.
For example, if you have written an add-on plugin for WooCommerce, you may not name it “WooCommerce Improved Product Search” as that would generate the slug “woocommerce-improved-product-search” and that would conflict with the trademark of ‘WooCommerce.’ That said, it would be acceptable to submit the name “Woo Improved Product Search” which would use the slug “woo-improved-product-search” (woo not being trademarked you see).
As another example, if you have a plugin that integrates a service with a Easy Digital Downloads, you may call it “My Service Integration for Easy Digital Downloads”, but you may not use “Easy Digital Downloads – My Service Integration”. Alternately you could use ‘EDD My Service Integration’ and that too would be permitted.
None of this impacts your display name of your plugin. The display name is generated from your readme.txt, and that can be whatever you’d like. Keep in mind, you should use “My Product for Other Product” as the description. Consider the example of Keurig. If you made an eco-friendly brew cup, you could market it “EcoBrew Pod for Keurig” but you could NOT attempt to market it as “Keurig EcoBrew Pod.” The latter implies a direct relationship to Keurig.
You are more than welcome, and encouraged, to include it in the description of the plugin in the ReadMe.txt file, but it cannot be in the name/slug of the plugin as described above.
Please resubmit this plugin with a better name and we will review it.
This will effect quite a few plugins. So note it for your uses. The policy is enforced on a per-reviewer basis. You can get around it if you work for the company it’s branded around or you have written permission.
Hat tip: Thanks Daniel Espinoza for the tip on this.
