A Must Have

Thanks for the discussion–I really appreciate it.

>> I’m thinking most people will start to use the new “Auto-updates” feature so it won’t be seen that often.

Actually it didn’t dawn on me, but with that new feature, my plugin will have less utility (although not zero utility).

>> Forgot to mention the above colours would be used only for the TD of your Plugin.

Yep, makes sense. That’s what I had in-mind. No need to hijack the entire row.

>> Once you get into 3 colours it can get a bit confusing.

Sure, simpler is probably better here.

>> 1 yr.
background-color: #fff8e5;
>> 2 yr.
background-color: #f56e28;

So something like this? That works. But just to play devil’s advocate, I thought about a border only. But I’d have to use darker colors (screenshot). Thoughts on that?

>> Remember that without being to remove these colours, they need to easily seen and only the 2 yr. will be obtrusive. And obtrusive is what a 2 yr. notice should be, urging that something be done with that Plugin.

OK that’s sound, and I can get behind it–the 2 year notice should be a bit obtrusive.

What about displaying a color key on the page to let users know what the colors mean? Or maybe an onhover and/or onclick tooltip somewhere (in the column header maybe)?

Separately, one big limitation of my plugin is that it can monitor only plugins in the WordPress plugin repo. It cannot monitor plugins downloaded from third party sources, e.g. CodeCanyon, or plugins that are only on GitHub, etc. I’ve done some research and it seems like this is just something I’ll have to live with. Would you agree?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by Carl Gross.

>> Do not be discouraged that your Plugin has a limited shelf life as that applies to the majority. For the next few years, maybe more, your Plugin will play an important part in reminding people to keep “their” Plugins updated. This will help every WordPress site be more secure and probably operate better as well.

Gotcha, thanks for that.

>> And I do believe you have “the only Plugin of this type” so Kudos to you for putting it together and providing it for all. 🙂

I did indeed come up with the idea for this plugin on my own. But to be completely up front, I then researched to see if anyone else had done something similar, and found another plugin. But it didn’t appear to be recently modified. I believe my code architecture is quite different from theirs (if I recall, they take an object oriented approach). Also, one of the main reasons I built this plugin was just to get experience building a WordPress plugin from scratch and getting it in the plugin repo. But I’m very glad to hear others are finding it useful.

>> I’m not sure where the Description text comes from

It’s in the file header DocBlock for the plugin’s main PHP file, in the ‘Description’ tag.

>> As to your questions, I would think that both, bg color and a border, would create a stronger Call To Action impulse and that is the idea.

OK let me play around with those and see how they look–thanks very much.

>> Displays “Last Updated” info as provided from one site: wordpress.org. Yellow background is 1 yr. Orange background is 2 yrs. Update or Replace as needed.

OK yes, that does indeed kill several birds with one stone. I’ll keep that in-mind and add it when I add the date color highlighting.

>> Off topic, it strikes me as odd that on the Plugin page the Description provided by a lot people include the word “Plugin” which is redundant and a waste of characters IMHO.

There’s a finite amount of information to be stored in the universe, and these are taking up unnecessary space 🙂 All jokes aside, you’re probably right–there’s no need to use the word ‘plugin’ in most of these cases, including mine.

Thanks very much!

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by Carl Gross.