In this podcast episode, host Michelle Frechette interviews Amadeu Arderiu, an industrial engineer from Barcelona and co-owner of Sirvelia. Company specializing in custom WordPress plugins. They discuss Amadeo’s innovative project, Ploogins, an AI-driven search engine that enhances plugin discovery through natural language queries. Amadeu demonstrates how users can find both free and premium plugins by describing their needs conversationally. The episode also covers the project’s potential to fill gaps in the current plugin ecosystem. Amadeu invites feedback to refine the tool further, aiming to benefit the WordPress community.
Top Takeaways:
- Ploogins Aims to Be a Comprehensive, AI-Powered Plugin Discovery Tool: Ploogins is designed to help users—especially WordPress newcomers—discover relevant plugins using natural language search, not just keyword matching. It fills a significant gap by indexing both free and premium plugins (like Gravity Forms and LearnDash), which are often missing from the official repository or difficult to find via general search.
- Submission and Visibility for Developers Are Central: Plugin developers can submit their premium plugins for free. The team is currently indexing submissions manually but plans to build a developer dashboard with search analytics and performance metrics. This could eventually evolve into semantic-based analytics, giving plugin creators deeper insights into how users find and interact with their plugins.
- Community Involvement and Feedback Are Critical: Amadeu emphasizes that they need real-world usage and feedback from both novice users and veteran developers to refine the tool. Michelle suggests the importance of finding and showcasing lesser-known or premium plugins, and both agree on the value of making plugin discovery more inclusive and efficient for the broader WordPress ecosystem
Mentioned In The Show:
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Transcript
Michelle Frechette 00:00:02 Welcome to this episode of Cache Up. And where I am catching up with Amadeu. How are you today?
Amadeu Arderiu 00:00:10 Hello. I am fine. How are you?
Michelle Frechette 00:00:12 Good. I did not even attempt on your last name because I know that it will be very bad. So I will let you introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about what you do and where you’re located in the world.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:00:24 Okay, well, my name is AmadeuArderiu. And don’t be afraid, because even in my country, in Spain, a lot of people have a hard time pronunciation. Pronouncing, pronunciation my name. My surname. Sorry. I am from Barcelona. I am an industrial engineer, and since 2016 I work at a company Sirvelia that I. I own actually with two more partners and we are developing since then, custom WordPress plugins as a service. That’s like a short way of of. Of presenting myself and, recently, more recently, we started, hunting for, for more, let’s say, sophisticated projects.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:01:18 And we are aiming for AI products, you know, developing we are trying to develop AI related products. And, one of the, the most featured ones is Ploogins with double O and plugins is a search engine using AI to recommend plugins for the user. So the user will hopefully use natural language to search and we will give them, hopefully also good recommendations as a WordPress plugins.
Michelle Frechette 00:01:54 And I was fortunate to have been asked to look at this very early on. So I have been looking at plugins for several months, if not before Christmas, maybe even. It’s been a while since I looked at it and I haven’t looked at it more recently. So I’m very excited for you to demonstrate it and show everybody what Ploogins is today. So why don’t you go ahead and share your screen and you can we can do a little more in-depth of how it can be used and how you accept submissions of people’s plugins into Ploogins.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:02:26 Well, let me know if my screen is now.
Michelle Frechette 00:02:29 I see it. Yes it is. Absolutely.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:02:31 Okay, so the main, the aim of Ploogins, as I said, is to recommend plugins. So instead of using keywords such as SEO, maybe we can use like a more, describe this, more describing way of writing. No? So let’s say I need to calculate the mortgage of my house, I don’t know, something very specific or niche. So let’s hit this search. So at this moment, Ploogins is rather slow because we’re thinking a lot of things is thinking. Yes. So. Well, Ploogins give us some, some plugins. Most of them are from the WordPress.org repository. So those are community plugins. And for these for for yes and free ones. For this example, I like to do this example because.
Michelle Frechette 00:03:38 There’s a lot of them.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:03:38 Yes. You know, it’s interesting because we, we have a lot of, plugins related to mortgage and that’s it. We have this UI. You can filter the results by a lot of interesting metrics such as popularity or rating. Well, you can give us some feedback because we are trying to improve this engine behind this Ploogins. But in this case, there are no premium plugins. So as you may start to started to, to to say before we are well and here you can see very feature plugin. Submit a plugin. So if a premium plugin developer once that plugin here they can for free and we are going to share them if the query is related to those plugins, I don’t maybe you can help me to find some good examples. You know? Maybe we can test your creativity as well and find some good examples, maybe to find some premium plugins here. Maybe something about e-commerce, you know.
Michelle Frechette 00:05:00 Sure. Yeah. How about something about donations? I need a plugin to accept donations.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:05:07 Okay. Let you need to, correct me. Okay. Because as you as you may notice, my English is not the best.
Michelle Frechette: It’s okay.
Amadeu Arderiu: I own. How you say the organization.
Michelle Frechette 00:05:22 Non-profit.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:05:24 Non-profit. And I need to accept
Michelle Frechette 00:05:30 Accept. Yeah.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:05:32 Donations.
Michelle Frechette 00:05:35 Yes.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:05:35 Okay.
Michelle Frechette 00:05:36 Let’s see what happens.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:05:38 The thing is, with this approach, the natural language approach, this is, what we see here. Donations, obviously, but we will do another example later without keywords. You know, like indirect search. Well, we have GiveWP here and. Well, we here a premium one. YITH Donations for WooCommerce. So this pill here, this batch allows us to tell the user that this plugin is premium. So, our focus with this, with this mix of premium and community plugins is to, to give a unified way of searching for plugins, you know, and if you and if we add the this natural language improvement we believe so, so much better than the let’s say usual way of searching for plugins. let’s say. My website has been hacked. Something like this.
Michelle Frechette 00:06:52 Oh okay.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:06:52 Yes. Okay.
Michelle Frechette 00:06:53 Right.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:06:54 So that’s a good example because it illustrates how this AI based search engine understands you know. Obviously we need security.
Michelle Frechette 00:07:10 Yes of course. It says secure your site. Yes.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:07:14 So the like to finish up this this demonstration the thing that I like most about Ploogins is that the possibilities for me are not endless, but near endless, because the problems that people face, when using WordPress are very complex and unique on its own. For each people, each person. So you don’t need to search for keywords, but you can search for your problems or your needs. And you don’t need to use technical vocabulary because we will understand what’s happening with your site. So that’s maybe the best way to to explain about this project.
Michelle Frechette 00:08:01 So that’s I think that’s phenomenal. First of all, I also like that it shows premium plugins that have been submitted. So if you go to wordpress.org to the repository, you’re only going to see free plugins that are in the repo. You’re not going to get anything that’s also, paid plugin. And if you just go to Google, who knows what you’re going to see, right? Because it may or may not be WordPress. It may or may not be applicable to what you’re looking for. And at that point, who’s paying for higher paying more for keywords is going to come to the top, etc.. So I think that’s great. Is it only in English or can you search in other languages as well?
Amadeu Arderiu 00:08:41 Yes. Ploogins understand every language because as you may suppose, we are using AI models here to understand the language. I don’t know. Maybe we can use Spanish for my convenience.
Michelle Frechette 00:08:58 Yes. Of course.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:09:00 Necesito. Una solution para mi imprenta. Do you know what imprenta means?
Michelle Frechette 00:09:13 No I don’t. I was with you all the way up until imprenta.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:09:17 Do you know the the shop where you go to print some, let’s say, t shirts or flyers for promotional purposes?
Michelle Frechette 00:09:27 Yeah. Print shop. Print shop.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:09:28 In this case, maybe this one is not maybe the best suited. Maybe this plugin has a lot of hidden features that we may know. Or AI thinks are suited for printing solutions. But apart from the first one print integration for WooCommerce, print invoice and the notes, maybe those are not. These are not. This is not a perfect suit as well. So this is also a good example, because sometimes the limit of the use of Ploogins is the plugins collection itself. I mean, there are, there are, there are some uses, some use cases. Sorry. that don’t have plugins yet. You know? So this this this tool is good for those people that want to create new plugins.
Michelle Frechette 00:10:26 Absolutely.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:10:27 So let’s, let’s find, let’s let’s see if there are plugins for this, for this niche or for this, you know, use case. So. Well, I say I, I, I know sometimes the AI hallucinates or just give
Michelle Frechette 00:10:45 Haha, yes.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:10:45 Us some wrong answers. So at Ploogins you will have wrong answers as well. But we are trying to give you wrong answers. Less and less. You know.
Michelle Frechette 00:10:55 And I see you can put a thumbs up or thumbs down. Is that is the is that rating like you’re rating the plugin or you’re rating the whether or not it fits the input.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:11:05 We are rating the search experience.
Michelle Frechette 00:11:09 Perfect. Yes.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:11:10 Let’s say too many underrated plugins. This is true for this case. So submit feedback. And we are going to use this for further improvements.
Michelle Frechette 00:11:21 Nice.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:11:22 You can share this. This shows created a unique URL. So this is public. You can search it with whatever. And you can sort this list by, you know, some interesting metrics.
Michelle Frechette 00:11:41 Or by worst ratings is an interesting option.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:11:44 Well, the thing is, I spoke with some people in the Spanish community and there in the Spanish community. We have some people in the plugins.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:11:58 Have you say the the people who review the plugins in the repository? And they said it’s a good tool because some people would like to see if they can improve some other plugins from other developers to help them, you know, and so on. So maybe this, way of sorting some, some of them are not the most appropriate for some typical users that want solutions.
Michelle Frechette 00:12:28 But it’s not the one you’re going to put on your website, but maybe the one that you want to develop or purchase from some other developer to make better.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:12:37 Well, it’s our way to tell everyone that this is a tool, you know, a way of using information with AI and, at your, you know, with your own objectives and so on.
Michelle Frechette 00:12:52 I wonder, so I have a plugin in the repository okay called Hello, Beautiful. And you know, we’re on, on your website, when you’re on the dashboard, it says, you know, Howdy, Amadeu. Right? In my in English it says, Howdy, Michelle. Next to that, it’ll say, you look wonderful today or this is the best website I ever saw. And so I don’t know how I would search that, but I’m curious to see if it will come up.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:13:19 Well, can I ask you if you can give me a quick description of what this plugin is this plugin on the repository?
Michelle Frechette 00:13:32 It is. And it’s, it’s, it’s modeled after Hello, Dolly. So it will give you positive feedback on your dashboard. So we’ll see.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:13:45 This is like $1 million, test, you know?
Michelle Frechette 00:13:49 Yeah.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:13:51 If I can pass this, this. This whole project make sense.
Michelle Frechette 00:13:58 I mean, it only has, you know, a hundred downloads, so. Or something like that.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:14:04 Well, let’s see if you see it. Just shout.
Michelle Frechette 00:14:10 I don’t see it yet. It’s called Hello, Beautiful. Like Hello, Dolly! So I’m not describing it. Well then for sure. Right?
Amadeu Arderiu 00:14:19 No.
Michelle Frechette 00:14:20 Because maybe feedback is the wrong word. Because feedback is giving is a word that we use to talk about our products and things. So, Oh, I don’t even know what the right word would be. I need.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:14:35 Know how you say if you if you need someone to, like, say, to greet you know, to greet you.
Michelle Frechette 00:14:46 Oh, yeah. that would be a good way to say it. And it’s only on the dashboard side, so treat me.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:14:53 To greet me.Cheerful. Cheerfully. That’s.
Michelle Frechette 00:14:57 Yeah, that’s a good word. It does, yes. Well, I still don’t. I still don’t think I have enough words in the plugin itself to actually be found. So we’ll see.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:15:07 The thing is, you have to write more.
Michelle Frechette 00:15:12 I do have to write more. Yeah. Because it’s not, I don’t think it’s going to it might be obsolete because I haven’t updated plugins. I haven’t updated it in a while.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:15:20 Do you want me to go here? You want me to go here?
Speaker 3 00:15:23 Yes, but I’m embarrassed if it comes there.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:15:27 Well, I think there are a lot of, well, no positivity. Hello, Beautiful.
Michelle Frechette 00:15:32 Hello, Beautiful. Yeah. Alright, I will work on that. I wanted to show up when people search here. So I will replace Howdy. That’s what I have to do is I have to. What’s the words replace howdy.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:15:44 Yo gave me a good example to show this. Also the obsolete plugins. So we are going. We always like hit them. But as I said this is a tool for people. Maybe they want to actually find obsolete plugins. So to have them here as well.
Michelle Frechette 00:16:00 If you just out of curiosity, if you type Hello Beautiful, will it show up if you put the title of the.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:16:09 So did I spell it correctly?
Michelle Frechette 00:16:11 That is correct. Yes, I am nervous.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:16:19 Oh, not the first one list.
Michelle Frechette 00:16:24 Maybe it’s obsolete. It’s. It’s been a while since it’s been updated. So it may show up under.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:16:29 I can give, I can well.
Michelle Frechette 00:16:31 Oh, there it is. That’s mine.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:16:33 You know the the this plugin likematched the query obviously. But since this plugin is not popular. Let’s say.
Michelle Frechette 00:16:46 It’s not that’s correct.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:16:46 It’s it’s ranked, lower. No. Because we have like, not very sophisticated but our own formula to sort.
Michelle Frechette 00:16:57 I’m not upset. It’s okay. But did show up, which is nice.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:17:02 We have this link to test it in playground with just one click, or I like to go to the plugin page. Yeah.
Michelle Frechette 00:17:11 And that’s really nice.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:17:11 Also to just individually, give feedback about feedback about if this plugin was well suited for this search, you know.
Michelle Frechette 00:17:22 Yes. I love that.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:17:26 This is Ploogins.
Michelle Frechette 00:17:27 That’s great. Yeah, I love it. So if somebody I see a submit. So let’s let’s say submit a premium plugin. What happens when you click there.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:17:37 Do you see the new tab?
Michelle Frechette 00:17:39 I do.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:17:40 Well we just need your information. You know, just give us your information. We are working now as we speak. Actually, like my colleague here right in front of me is working on this. We are working on a developer dashboard. Where people who submit plugins will have their plugins there. And we will see some metrics more in the future. And the way of submitting plugins will be handled automatically. For now we are just indexing them, manually. So just give us your details. We will contact you. We will ask for some information, not the plugin itself for now. Maybe, maybe in the future we will use actually like the code itself to know the what the plugin does. But for now, just some descriptions and some information that we are going to carefully index in our database. So that’s a way of adding premium plugins. It’s it’s free. So just, you know, just, we want to have the largest collection of plugins, WordPress plugins in one place and use the AI to to help people find them.
Michelle Frechette 00:19:03 I love that. So I often create, I shouldn’t say often I have created, WordPress websites before that serve the public, serve the WordPress community like WP Speakers for example. That is what this does. I have not really monetized that at all. Like I had some some, what’s the word about? I had some sponsors in year one and I’ve done nothing more past it. How are you planning to monetize this, or is this just a gift? And if you are planning to monetize it, how does that happen?
Amadeu Arderiu 00:19:36 Well, first of all, let’s say this project costs us some money. Some money that for now, we are willing to, let’s say assume. Assume, you know.
Michelle Frechette 00:19:48 Okay. Yeah, because AI searches are not free.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:19:51 Are not free. This the usage of this website is slowly increasing. So we are going to pay more and more. So the question about the economic sustainability for us as a micro company with just three partners, you know, getting money from services, you know, for, for giving our time, it’s a challenge. So for now, our aim is to have like the, the, the, the most amount of plugins as possible. And from there, I think we are going to try to find some good ideas, you know, for the plugin developers to give them something. I am thinking about maybe analytics because people are developing plugins. They have some information from WordPress.org and some information from, let’s say, Google, their website and a lot of channels. So this could be a good way of unifying some of these metrics and giving them not like a keyword base analytics, like a semantic based analytics, which is, I believe, like the AI way of thinking, you know. And on the other hand, on the other way, on the other hand. Sorry. We are thinking about trying to find some sponsors as well. As, as you said, you, you are you, you you went the same route. So in that regard, we are just starting to see if this is a possibility for us. We don’t. Yet understand, if the. We don’t know yet. Know if these possible expansions will, see this as an opportunity or not. So we are just starting for now, let’s say, is, temporal, temporary gift for the community.
Michelle Frechette 00:21:53 Yes. Would you have ideas of maybe, allowing different plugins to bid on certain keywords? So for example, you know, we saw give, we saw youth, we saw charitable, those kinds of things in there. And they all will want the word donations. Right? So would it be possible for them to rank higher if they bid and on the word donation so that they would rank higher in your search?
Amadeu Arderiu 00:22:18 It’s another possibility.
Michelle Frechette 00:22:21 I have lots of ideas.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:22:24 Yes, yes, yes, I see. The thing is for, for me especially, I mean, we talked about a lot of ideas with our partners because in this project, we are we are allied with some other individuals. But then the problem is our time, our developing time, because we when we spend one hour here, we need to take away one hour from our customers.
Michelle Frechette 00:22:54 Right. Exactly.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:22:55 That’s why it’s for us like a compromise, you know?
Michelle Frechette 00:22:58 Yeah. In English we call it a balancing act. You have to balance your time between things, right. So that it’s still stays level. And you haven’t lost anything on either side for sure. Yeah. I just think this. I told you this when you sent it to me last, very early on, I thought this was really awesome idea. And, I think the reason that the sStellar plugins are there is because I said, yes, use the Stellar plugins. So those are out there too, which is awesome.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:23:27 I remember it, I remember it.
Michelle Frechette 00:23:29 And so we can say I’m not there anymore, but they can still thank me.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:23:34 I hope they, they do. I hope they do. Well, well I hope first I hope they remember they are here.
Michelle Frechette 00:23:43 For sure. I’ll remind them. I’ll remind them. I’ll see them in Europe as well too. And I think this is just wonderful. Absolutely. So what is your call to action for people right now to use it, but also to add the premium plugins. Are those the two things you would like people to do? Are you looking for feedback like what are some things that people can do to help you move this forward?
Amadeu Arderiu 00:24:05 The first is to use it. We would like to for like newbie users to use it. Maybe. I don’t know if they are going to listen to this also for this. High. I don’t know. The veteran people, you know, the people using WordPress for so long to use it as well because we need to just test it against itself. You know, we need to see if, for real world use case, no? Is useful, you know? So we, need to we need people to use it. And if these people are also developers, they are going, I think they’re going to love to see their plugins here as well, you know, to see if their plugins are going to appear on some search queries. You know, when I imagine myself with a plugin and I say, okay, yes, here you have my plugin, I will 100% use Ploogins to see if my plugin shows up as you just did. So I, I think that, to summarize, the idea is if you are a WordPress plugin developer, give us plugin and use Ploogins to see if your plugin shows up. And this will help us a lot.
Michelle Frechette 00:25:34 I think that’s great, I love that, I think it’s a fantastic idea. I hope that other people will, you know, discover. I’ll share it on my socials, of course. And with this, this podcast, I’m sure we’ll get in some people’s ears so they will hear it and learn more about it. I’m very excited about it for you. I think that it’s a wonderful tool. One of the things, one of the reasons I started WP Speakers is because not everybody is in WordPress.org. And if they are, you don’t always know their username. Right? So the same thing is true for plugins. We have so many plugins in the repository, but not all of the plugins are there. So things that are only premium like Gravity Forms and like Learndash, those are never going to be found in the repository, but they will be found on Ploogins if people submit them to you. So I think that’s a wonderful opportunity.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:26:25 Yes, yes, we are just let’s say we are not submitting plugins without consent. So we just need people to let’s. That’s okay. You have our consent to display this plugin in this website. We are not, we are not, you know how you say. Sorry. I have to to find the words sometimes.
Michelle Frechette 00:26:50 Translated in your head.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:26:51 We are not competing with them with URLs or something like this. We plugins here don’t have, like, its own URL, so we’re just not, you know, fighting for this. We just want people to find plugins.
Michelle Frechette 00:27:05 Yeah. And the easiest way to do that is to make it easy for them and put it in more places that they can find it, especially something that’s dedicated like Google is not dedicated to your plugins, to WordPress plugins, and the repository is only dedicated to free plugins. So this is such a lovely place to fill that gap in between and help people find what it is that they’re looking for.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:27:26 Thank you.Thank you.
Michelle Frechette 00:27:27 Absolutely. Will you be at WordCamp Europe?
Amadeu Arderiu 00:27:30 Yes we will. As a company we will be there. We will be repeating our experience as a small business sponsor. We will be talking there about Ploogins as well, and and some other projects that may be interesting about AI as well. And let’s, let’s hope this year is even better than the others behind. And absolutely, we will try to, you know, get a lot of positive feedback from there.
Michelle Frechette 00:28:05 So if people want to connect with you, they can go to Ploogins.com. They can find you on Sirvelia. Is that also.com?
Amadeu Arderiu 00:28:13 Sirvelia.com. Yes.
Michelle Frechette 00:28:15 And then they can also just find you at WordCamp Europe or in the Post Status Slack. And I think you’re on Twitter as well or X.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:28:23 Well since I am more active in the Spanish community. If you are a Spanish speaker, you can find me better at LinkedIn because I right there in Spanish and on X and BlueSky. I try to write only in English, so.
Michelle Frechette: Gotcha.
Amedeu Arderiu: You have to choose.
Michelle Frechette 00:28:49 Well, I will say muchas gracias. Thank you so much for being here. And that’s all I’m going to say publicly. I’ll practice my Spanish one on one, but not on a podcast.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:29:00 Okay. Thank you very much for having me here. And the opportunity to talk about Ploogins as well.
Michelle Frechette 00:29:07 It’s my pleasure. Hang on for just a minute while we wrap this up, and I will just chat with you a little bit afterwards. Thank you, everybody else, for being here. We’re also going to be talking to Ryan Bracey very shortly. So you’ll see him on here in the next week or two. Also talking about WordPress Accessibility Day and the call for speakers. So thank you so much everybody for hanging in there with us. And thank you so much Amadeu for being here with us today.
Amadeu Arderiu 00:29:29 Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. See you all soon.
