Vim plugins don't always load?

Question

I was trying to install autoclose.vim to Vim. I noticed I didn't have a ~/.vim/plugin folder, so I accidentally made a ~/.vim/plugins folder (notice the extra 's' in plugins). I then added au FileType python set rtp += ~/.vim/plugins to my .vimrc, because from what I've read, that will allow me to automatically source the scripts in that folder.

The plugin didn't load for me until I realized my mistake and took out the extra 's' from 'plugins'. I'm confused because this new path isn't even defined in my runtime path. I'm basically wondering why the plugin loaded when I had it in ~/.vim/plugin but not in ~/.vim/plugins?

Answer 1

:help load-plugins outlines how plugins are loaded.

Adding a folder to your rtp alone does not suffice; it must have a plugin subdirectory. For example, given :set rtp+=/tmp/foo, a file /tmp/foo/plugin/bar.vim would be detected and loaded, but neither /tmp/foo/plugins/bar.vim nor /tmp/foo/bar.vim would be.