Last Friday (09/30/22), the active install growth chart disappeared from the plugin repository without notice.
This unwarranted move left WordPress plugin developers in dismay.
It was the only metric we had to tell if our plugins were growing or not.
Now, we can only check the popular plugins list to see if our plugin is growing or shrinking.
The number of active installs is the only ranking factor of the popular plugins list: wordpress.org/plugins/browse/popular/.
If your plugin is climbing up the rankings, it is most likely growing or shrinking less than other plugins.
If your plugin loses positions in the rankings, it is likely shrinking or growing less than other plugins.
For as mind-blowing as it sounds, this is all we got.
To make things worst, on wordpress.org, this is something that only the 1st 1980 plugins (99 pages) can do if logged in. Logged-out users can only see the first 49 pages.
The authors of the other 53.137 plugins (at the time of writing) no longer have any way to know! (unless they use the wp.org API and do the math.)
That is why we created wp-rankings.com, to give WordPress plugin developers at least a clue about their plugin’s growth and provide a few other interesting stats.
This is also a project that we built to show the capabilities of our Directory plugin, combined with our upcoming theme Blockstrap.
+50k listings on a regular server: resulting in sub 1 sec loading time, a 95 score from PageSpeed Insights, without caching or any kind of optimization.
We hope you will support this small project. It is 100% free and if you liked it, please share it with a plugin developer friend!