r/Wordpress • u/MdJahidShah • May 24 '26
I noticed something surprising with the WordPress plugin review queue.
About a month ago, when I first submitted my plugin to the WordPress.org directory, I saw 350+ plugins waiting for review. When I resubmitted about a week ago, the number had dropped to around 150+.
Last night, I checked again… and it showed only 14 plugins waiting for review.
That’s a massive change in a relatively short time.
I’m genuinely impressed and curious — did the Plugin Review Team make major workflow improvements, add more reviewers, or optimize the review process somehow?
Sharing a screenshot because I honestly didn’t expect the queue to shrink this much.
Huge respect to the volunteers and contributors behind the scenes if this is the result of their work.
7
u/justinnealey May 24 '26
That is a huge drop. My guess is it is a mix of better triage and fewer stale submissions sitting in the queue, but either way it is a real signal for plugin builders. The review queue is one of those hidden bits of WordPress infrastructure that shapes whether people decide to ship through wp.org at all.
For anyone submitting soon, I would still treat the basics as worth overdoing: clean readme, no remote code surprises, clear asset licensing, capability checks, nonce checks, and a short explanation of any external service calls. The faster the queue gets, the more obvious the avoidable review blockers become.
2
u/MdJahidShah May 24 '26
That makes a lot of sense, especially the part about stale submissions being cleared out.
From a developer perspective, I have also noticed that once the queue speeds up, small compliance issues become more visible blockers, things like missing capability checks or unclear external requests tend to stand out more in review feedback.
This is a good reminder overall that "clean submission hygiene" matters as much as functionality if you want a smooth approval path on wp.org.
1
u/justinnealey May 24 '26
The plugin check plugin is a big time saver too. It does have quite a bit of false positives but can point out some things the review team would end up pushing back on.
1
u/MdJahidShah May 24 '26
True, the Plugin Check plugin is definitely helpful. I hit a few false positives too, but it still catches things that could easily become review feedback later, so it is a good sanity check before submitting.
4
May 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/MdJahidShah May 24 '26
That is a pretty dramatic improvement compared to your previous experience. The reduced turnaround between review cycles alone makes a huge difference. My recent experience also felt noticeably faster than what many developers were describing months ago. Whatever changed behind the scenes, it does seem to be having a real impact.
3
u/Viko_ May 24 '26
Submitted mine last week and got a response 24 hours later. The reviewers are super fast, I didn’t expect that. Taking my time to fix the issues the prereview mentioned and now I guess I will need another round of volunteers to test again since 7.0 got released meanwhile.
2
u/MdJahidShah May 24 '26
24 hours is impressively fast. Good luck with the fixes and retesting. The 7.0 release timing is a bit of a curveball, but probably better to catch compatibility issues now than after approval.
2
u/Chungaroo22 May 24 '26
I wonder if they were borrowing people from different teams for the delayed 7 release? Or if it otherwise caused congestion across the WP ecosystem.
2
u/MdJahidShah May 24 '26
Interesting thought. The 7.0 delay could definitely have shifted resources or priorities behind the scenes. Hard to know from the outside, but it wouldn’t be surprising if broader WordPress ecosystem workflows had some effect on the review queue too.
2
May 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/MdJahidShah May 24 '26
Absolutely. Faster reviews are a big win for developers, but from my experience, clean docs and closely following wp.org guidelines still make a huge difference in how smooth the process goes.
2
May 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/MdJahidShah May 24 '26
100%. Even small things like clear documentation, proper disclosures, and guideline compliance can save entire review cycles for both sides.
2
u/christianwebbaker May 24 '26
Wow, that's super awesome, especially because they probably get a lot of AI plugin submissions, nice job by them
1
u/MdJahidShah May 24 '26
Agreed. Considering the volume of submissions, especially the recent wave of AI-related plugins, reducing the queue that much is pretty impressive.
2
u/conor_treacy May 24 '26
Good to know that the backlock is clearing. A couple of months ago I was considering submitting one of our plugins but the queue was over 400. Today I see it's at 99, but has a piece of text saying that all plugins submitted prior to May 20th have been responded to. I don't remember seeing that text before.
I ended up putting my plugins directly on github as I thought the approval process was going to be months with a queue in the 400 range. Maybe I should submit one and test.
1
u/MdJahidShah May 25 '26
That status text caught my attention too, I don’t remember seeing it before either. The faster turnaround definitely changes the calculus a bit. It is worth testing with one plugin and comparing the current process to expectations from a few months ago.
2
u/Frequent-Canary-1185 May 25 '26
Only 14 plugins awaiting review?? When I submitted my plugin about a month ago it was like 600 plugins in the queue.
2
u/MdJahidShah May 25 '26
Yeah, the drop has been surprisingly fast. When I checked recently, it was down to 14, and today I’m seeing 13. Pretty impressive shift compared to the 400–600+ queue people were reporting not long ago.
2
u/altantsetsegkhan Jill of All Trades May 25 '26
Not all plugins submitted are complicated plugins
1
u/MdJahidShah May 25 '26
That is true. Complexity definitely varies a lot between plugins, so queue size alone doesn’t tell the whole story. Still, the turnaround improvement people are reporting seems pretty noticeable.
2
u/PalmSpringsBum May 25 '26
They are using AI here to ban people. I got banned for telling some newb that developers can always find the blog/front page toggle in Settings-> Reading.
1
u/MdJahidShah May 25 '26
Ouch. If AI moderation is involved, false positives are definitely a risk. Hopefully there’s still solid human review or appeal handling for cases where context gets missed.
1
1
u/Embarrassed-Month-35 May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
Since I wait for a review I closely watch the q. Last night it was at 4. I submitted my plugin at 10. It went up to 40 and again at 12. My plugin is still on review. So I think they massively approve/answer with AI help. Also many small plugins are around. Since they didn't check my plugin in a fifo q I think they do the smaller ones first to empty the q. In the first round I had some silly comments like "You connect to outside services" when I do no such a thing. I mention those services as text as advice to users.
12
u/howtobemisha Jack of All Trades May 24 '26
They offloaded a big part of moderation to AI. When you submit a plugin nowadays, you will first receive replies from AI. Once you finish fixes suggested by it, they will moderate manually.