Important changes in the marketplace

The nopCommerce marketplace has 1,500+ integrations, plugins, and graphical themes from almost 300 vendors. A large and diverse marketplace is very important to allow everyone to easily customize their store. But with a large number of products, it should be well-structured and contain detailed and clear descriptions. Otherwise, the buyers would not be able to find the needed extensions.

That is why we initiate changes to improve our marketplace and make it more convenient. We have seriously updated the requirements for extensions and themes. Starting from today, the nopCommerce team will carry out quality control checks of all the extensions there. Find the details below.

Problems to solve

We highly appreciate the activity of vendors and their contribution to our marketplace, but right now, some things should be improved for the common benefit:

1. Plugins descriptions are often too short and give no idea of ​the extension’s features and why it is worth using it.
2. For the paid extensions, some vendors do not provide end customer support.
3. Some plugins are not tested carefully and can be improved.
4. Some graphical themes don’t even have a live demo.

New requirements

To solve these problems, we revised the requirements for extensions and themes in the marketplace. They are described in detail on this page.

The main changes are:

• The new requirements for the extension description. Now every extension requires a long and detailed description. It should correspond to the actual product.
• Some restrictions are set for the information that can be indicated in the name.
• The source code of extensions needs to be provided. As part of our technical review process we check functionality and source code quality of each uploaded extension.
• Extensions should solve a problem for merchants, either by adding new functionality to nopCommerce, or by creating a faster or easier way to do something that already exists within nopCommerce. Now we do not approve too simple plugins (for example, a home page sliders).

There are also important requirements that are familiar to our vendors, but their compliance will be checked more carefully since now:

• The presence of a “contact us” page at the vendor’s website. It is required to provide the customer’s support for commercial extensions and themes.
• Live demo websites are required for the graphical themes.

Expected results

The marketplace will become more structured. The necessary extensions will become easier to find. The quality of the marketplace catalog will grow.

Vendors will benefit from changes, too. Appropriate and detailed descriptions will draw more attention to their extensions and themes. Buyers will better understand the benefits of using their plugins, which will lead to sales growth.

Uploading & Reviewing processes

Uploading the extensions and themes is still available on the “My extensions” page.

After you fill and save the information about the new extension, it is reviewed by the nopCommerce team with “Under review” status. Once approved, it is published on the marketplace, and its status changes to “Approved”.

If some requirements are not met, the status changes to “Rejected (changes required)” with the comment from the nopCommerce team of what should be fixed. In this case, please edit the already submitted extension and do not create a new one. The plugin goes to rechecking, and if everything is fixed according to the requirements, it becomes publicly available.

The information on all your extensions and their statuses is available at “My extensions” page.

What will happen to all the existing extensions

Now all plugins and themes on the marketplace are assigned a temporary status of “To be deleted (changes required)”. To remove it, all vendors have to update their extensions following the new requirements. After saving the changes, the extension is to be reviewed by the nopCommerce team. If the new requirements are met, the status will change to “Approved”.

The changes are needed to be done before February 1, 2020. After this deadline, plugins that will still have “To be deleted” status will be removed from the marketplace.