On Smashing Magazine today there's a new article from Joost de Valk about some of the things he learned from maintaining a WordPress plugin - one to help easily track your site via Google Analytics.

Recently I released a WordPress plugin for Google Analytics that adds a tracking code and dozens of various pieces of meta data to blogs. Since the release of version 4, I’ve updated it 6 times, to the point where it’s now at version 4.0.6. In this article I would like to share with you my experiences in maintaining this and other WordPress plug-ins and common good practices that I’ve distilled from that work.

He breaks it up into a few different categories:

• Website and Account Configuration
• Versioning Option Arrays
• Don't Release Too Soon
• Know Which Version People Are On
• URLs in WordPress
• Writing to the Root Directory
• Rethink Your Filters
• Never Assume