Anki addon impossible to publish

Anki Syncing & AnkiWeb
1

Hey,

I create account on ankiweb.net 14 December 2025, I still cannot publish add-on.

What I need to do to publish it ?

2

As I said to you on Discord earlier:

If you’ve been actively using your AnkiWeb account for the past 5 months, you should be able to share an add-on by now.

This account shows no signs of active use. So that’s why it’s still not enabled for sharing.

If you are an Anki user, and have a different account that you actually use – you might be able to share the add-on from that account. Otherwise: Sharing Add-ons - Writing Anki Add-ons .

3

No one told me beforehand that I had to ‘actively use’ my ankiweb.net account.

I also don’t understand what the connection is between using ankiweb.net and publishing add-ons. I actively use the Anki programme; I’ve made what I think is a cool add-on that I feel will be useful to many people. I don’t see the connection here with having to actively use ankiweb first. I also don’t know what “actively use” means. I haven’t had any problems with Anki so far, nor any questions, nor the time to participate in the forum. I make my own decks for my own use in the Anki programme.

So, in that case, could you please tell me some more specific things I need to do in order to publish an add-on on ankiweb? So that I don’t end up doing something and then waiting five months to see if it works. Clear guidelines, please (can be here on in discord privately if you don’t want publish it here) :slight_smile:

Thanks

4

If you don’t have time for a forum, how will you have time to respond to users? Host the add-on on GitHub and describe what you’ve created there (in the add-ons section). Someone will try it and appreciate it. Even if you host it here, there’s no guarantee that anyone will actively download and use it. People are too lazy to even say thank you :(, although even an employer should tell their employees “thank you for a job well done” every day—respect is important, regardless of their position.
So, I think if you need this add-on for use, that’s already good. By hosting it on “ankiweb,” we can only partially guarantee its safety for users, but the main thing is the easy installation and notification of add-on updates. If you want, you can create a survey about updates and disconnect from “ankiweb” entirely.
But still, I think add-ons should be promoted through social media, YouTube, and other channels. And when they’re free…well, it doesn’t really make much sense when the same time could be spent developing another add-on or something else.

5

This restriction was recently added because malicious developers used AI to attack the AnkiWeb server. I think they’re probably intentionally keeping it unclear, if the required number of days were known malicious developers could use that info to bypass the restrictions. Recently no malware has been detected but if more is found I think they will likely tighten the restrictions again.

If AnkiWeb is not available one alternative is to distribute the .ankiaddon file directly using GitHub or a similar platform, this approach is frequently used by developers (e.g. beta version, or file size too large). To be frank AnkiWeb add-ons have almost no promotional effect, according to my data typical add-ons only get tens to hundreds of downloads, so distributing add-ons on SNS platforms like Discord or YouTube or reddit is more effective than using AnkiWeb, useful add-ons become popular by recommendations from the learning community, very few users search for AnkiWeb directly.

6

If you don’t have time for a forum, how will you have time to respond to users?

That’s a bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut :slight_smile:
You know, I realise I could publish the add-on anywhere. But I decided that, since the add-on is completely free and open-source, and it’s really useful to me, I’d publish it on a website promoting Anki, which is also open-source. That way, people can easily find it.

Thanks for your thoughts :slight_smile:

7

Nice! So publishing it on github or anywhere else is a choice, I will do it if ankiweb will not unlock for me.
I simply thought to publish in the place, where in Anki app go to tools->addons->browse addons. And you don’t need to search the internet for the addon file.

By the way. It’s a shame that, because of all the rubbish flooding the internet, we have to put these safeguards in place. I’ve also had to disable the contact form on my Unreal Engine plugin recently, as I was getting dozens of spam messages a week :frowning:

8

I still post it on GitHub, because it’s easier for the reviewer to immediately see what’s in the code and what’s changed. AndreyKaiu (Andrei Krutov) · GitHub
I could get hacked, then everything would be replaced everywhere, and there would be an attempt to spread viruses. That’s the world: people don’t trust you completely, even if you’ve written good programs 100 times. You see, this is happening a lot now.
You could get banned for this, even permanently :slight_smile: But if the code is still somewhere, it won’t be lost, and people will still get it.
Although…who needs anything these days? Entertainment rules the world; more people watch it, more people want to use it.