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Following an interesting discussion in the comments under How can I set cookies on my posts so that I can get view count of that post I'd like to know if plugins hosted on wordpress.org are considered third-party in the sense of the WPSE guidelines where you won't receive support for them here? Or if they are considered somewhat different, if not first-party?

Taking Post Views Counter for example as this was the subject in the mentioned question above I'd consider this much more of a first-party plugin (and therefore on topic) than any (premium) plugin that's hosted somewhere else, for example MemberPress. If a user would have problems with Post Views Counter on let's say how to programmatically query posts by view count I'd consider this on topic.

Regarding Drupal there is the division between core modules, contributed modules (hosted on drupal.org), custom modules, and third-party modules/libraries (hosted somewhere else then within the Drupal infrastructure). But only a really small percentage (if not none) I guess is offering additional premium features.

Or is this distinction for WordPress a little bit more difficult? Since a lot of lite versions of plugins are hosted on wordpress.org which let you subscribe to additional premium features/add-ons like for example Yoast or WooCommerce?

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    All plugins are considered to be 3rd party plugins no matter where they're hosted. If we were to change that rule we would need to rethink our guidelines and rewrite our help section.
    – Howdy_McGee Mod
    May 22, 2019 at 14:45
  • @Howdy_McGee – This maybe aligns with the fact that WordPress doesn't provide core plugins which could be considered on-topic, I see. However I always thought WPO hosted plugins are not considered 3rd party and this paragraph in the off-topic close reason explicitly is targeting premium plugins hosted somewhere else.
    – leymannx
    May 22, 2019 at 15:17

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Yes, they're 3rd party. For example Yoast SEO is a well known plugin on wp.org, but they're a 3rd party company with roots in northern europe.

1st party plugins are those maintained by the WP project itself and its contributors as official projects. They have channels in the WP slack, and fall into 2 buckets:

  • Feature Plugins intended for Core, plugins where a feature for core is being built prior to a merge proposal, e.g. Gutenberg, MP6, Responsive Images. These plugins once merged either were consumed into core, or continued on as a means of improving that component outside of a release cycle ( Gutenberg )
  • Misc Plugins, these would be plugins such as the WP Importer

Those 2 categories can be identified in this list here: https://profiles.wordpress.org/wordpressdotorg/#content-plugins

Notice that a lot of these plugins became features in WP Core, and are no longer maintained.

There is also the topic of WP CLI and other official WP projects, these are on topic too, and have their own slack channels and Make WP blogs

I should note that Automattic plugins are not 1st party. This is because Automattic is a 3rd party commercial entity. They do have the same CEO as the project lead, and a lot of contributors are Automatticians, but Automattic doesn't make WordPress. This means WooCommerce, Jetpack, etc are 3rd party plugins.

Finally, you yourself can create a plugin and submit it to the plugin repository. This doesn't make you a 1st party source

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    Good answer! Even 1st party plugins would likely be considered off topic I think. Questions regarding Blogware Importer or Categories to Tags Converter for example would probably get closed fairly quick by the community. A good rule of thumb is probably if it isn't in core and isn't WPCLI then it's likely off topic and if you're unsure to ask in The Loop.
    – Howdy_McGee Mod
    May 22, 2019 at 22:32
  • If all plugins are off-topic, maybe that should be specified in wordpress.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic . Alternatively, if the "third-party" language is kept, it would be necessary to specify who the "first party" is.
    – Nemo
    Jul 9, 2022 at 19:21
  • @Nemo but it IS! Under the "Note that we do not handle questions:" section is a bullet point titled "questions concerning third party plugins and themes" with a description. It's also innaccurate to say that all plugins are off-topic. E.g. this question would be on topic: "I'm trying to build a plugin and want to add my name as the author in the admin plugin list, what's the name of the field WP uses in the plugin header?"
    – Tom J Nowell Mod
    Jul 9, 2022 at 19:54
  • @TomJNowell that description doesn't define what qualifies as "third party plugins". Given your example, maybe instead of "questions concerning third party plugins and themes" the page could say "questions concerning existing plugins and themes".
    – Nemo
    Jul 9, 2022 at 19:58
  • It does, but I can see that since 1st party isn't outright defined you might see it that way. I've just edited the on topic page to clarify things further, replace HTML formatting with standard SE markdown, and provide concrete links to the first party items. Questions concerning existing plugins and themes would also be innaccurate and result in many on-topic questions becoming off-topic, e.g. questions about default themes, buddypress questions, or gutenberg questions
    – Tom J Nowell Mod
    Jul 9, 2022 at 20:22
  • also there's a distinction you aren't making, questions about developing your own themes and plugins vs questions about developing for a plugin/theme you bought/downloaded from someone who isn't yourself/wordpress.org.
    – Tom J Nowell Mod
    Jul 9, 2022 at 20:32

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