Create a plugin authority

  • ShawnLunny

    (@shawnlunny)


    12 years, 10 months ago

    This is more of feedback and a suggestion; but i’m not sure if it goes here even after reading the README so possible apologies in advance.

    One main issue with plugin search on this site, and from within wordpress is that it is a loose search. If i search for lets say an “ad rotator” i will get a bunch of results. Some may be super old or incompatible, and some may be great. Some may have positive 5 star votes but now the plugin is out of date. I feel like a fresh redesign would be great that takes into account the age of a plugin as well as popularity and that plugin authors should get “press points” for going above and beyond.

    For example, plugins that have not had an update in 6 months should go into a “give it a try section”. I believe that from a consumer of plugins it gives me an idea of how likely the plugin will work with my install; and if my business relies on stability i may seek out a plugin that is supported actively. There’s nothing worse than swapping plugins to stay ahead of core changes that break the old plugin. You would give press points for bug and feature updates. Another part of it is if someone gets a problem resolved on a plugins support page and marks the issue as resolved the plugin author gets more “press points”.

    Press points along with some basic badges can then let consumers of plugins know how trust worthy the developer is, as well as how active in the WP community, and how good the support is. In the long run plugin developers who are solid can make a living with premium plugin(s)/functionality and have a career doing it.

    In the search; top rated (but up to date) and compatible plugins (where author has specified current wordpress version) should show up first in a search, with a give it a try section at the bottom or on later pages. For example, plugins not updated in 2 years should be on the last pages.

    Final note, is that it would be up to the author to verify their plugin still works on each update of wordpress. They would get points for this as well.

    Thanks in advance!

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • esmi

    (@esmi)

    12 years, 10 months ago

    Improvements to the Plugin search are already on a very long ToDo list.

    is that it would be up to the author to verify their plugin still works on each update of wordpress.

    In practice, this is not feasible. Many plugins work just fine with the latest version of WordPress without requiring any update. What you are suggesting would make updating the plugin’s readme.txt file mandatory after every single WordPress update. That would result in a lot of completely pointless updates and probably quite a few very angry users.

    Thread Starter ShawnLunny

    (@shawnlunny)

    12 years, 10 months ago

    If the compatible version could be updated through some sort of account management on the website then there wouldn’t need to be an update to the plugin itself. Author logs in and changes the compatible version after testing which shows up in the plugins information.

    Also I’m not just simply stating a need for a better search, i’m talking about creating a better ecosystem around plugins and creating incentive around code maintenance and community involvement with “press points”.

    The fact is most of wordpress maintenance for end users (consumer and business alike) is in plugin maintenance. I could see the plugin part of this site being handed off to the community to manage.

    esmi

    (@esmi)

    12 years, 10 months ago

    If the compatible version could be updated through some sort of account management on the website

    Currently, that’s not how the plugin SVN works.

    mch0lic

    (@mch0lic)

    12 years, 10 months ago

    As a developer I would probably instantly discontinue all plugins on WordPress if this would get compulsory. Developers give away plugin that could cost hundreds or thousands in labour for free and instead of a single review per 1000 downloads you see these complains about how the quality is bad and how dev’s should devote more time to make ungrateful users happy. Write strongly opinionated review for each plugin you’re using, participate in discussion board by reporting bugs or sharing your insights/suggestions and you will get the quality you want.

    If you not satisfied with free plugins there is plenty of folks out there who offers premium/subscription based/etc solution, you will get you features added, you will get your support and there will be someone out there listening to all your complains about it. Don’t want to pay? Well, create your own awesome 24/7 supported plugins and see how that will turn for a living. Everyone wants to get premium quality for free, but devs also have to make a living, and trust me 99% of these free plugins never nor will they make a dime.

    Thread Starter ShawnLunny

    (@shawnlunny)

    12 years, 10 months ago

    @mc0lic

    First by let me say i am a developer and have been for almost 15 years so I am not some ungrateful user. I understand doing the all nighters.

    I think you really aren’t understanding the point. It’s not about being ungrateful to developers who spend a lot of time developing. In fact its about giving them more respect and power in the community at large. It’s about giving community acknowledgement to their efforts by “press points”. If you are working your butt off why not get recognized versus those who work less? You will always have complaints for sure and just as many who are appreciative. Thats not whats being said here.

    An example of what I would like to see is like the iphone store. There are lots of free and paid apps there as well but what are you guaranteed as a user? If it is compatible for your phone its in the app search, otherwise its not listed in there. I would like to see this extended to wordpress? Why? Because no one wants to have to look through 10-12 apps with the same feature set and install and uninstall something that has been abandoned? To what you said, I do contact lots of developers and have contributed to their open code when possible and also report bugs as I find them.

    What prompted me to write about this idea is frustration:

    1.) Why are great and actively developed plugins lost in plugins 2-3 years out of date that no longer work. Is that fair to the developer who is killing himself to build a great product actively? I don’t know about you but I would want all the users I could to use my product. The site needs a spring cleaning.

    2.) StackExchange sites especially WordPress Answers are inundated with plugin specific questions of out dated plugins when its meant for discussing plugin development and wordpress core. They are having problems with experts leaving the community because most questions are about poorly written plugins. I think there should be a best practices and code should be reviewed. It guarantees a good product AND the developer could learn something that grows their skill set. As a developer myself I want to know the best way to develop something or know that what I am doing may no longer be the best way (i.e deprecations). Say what you want but peer review would make your code better and in the long term would mean less code maintenance.

    3.) Most users are not developers. The point of having plugins fall out of search that are old is so they don’t install something that they will need help with out of the gate. I can’t tell you how many times I see plugin questions that start with “I installed this today, but it doesn’t work”… Looking at the last update is 2 years ago. Lets prevent this chaos.

    mch0lic

    (@mch0lic)

    12 years, 10 months ago

    @shawnlunny

    I understand what you saying, but you trying to move more responsibility to developers rather then proposing feature where those million users without any coding skills could be asked to contribute back.

    Right now you have compatibility (on the bottom of plugin page sidebar), if at least 1 in a 100 would select and vote for right version combination, you probably won’t have hard time downloading and installing something that is not working unless you really want to try it for yourself.

    Having star review data, compatibility, plugin last update date and probably some other relative data one could come up with pretty good algorithm for plugin listing. Even broken versions could be filtered out before displaying to the end user.

    I would suggest improve plugin page (not on the website but in cms) in the following ways:

    1. When user deletes plugin ask him if the plugin was working or not compatible with his current WP version.
    2. When user opens plugin listing page (CMS) randomly show message like “Do you like plugin xyz? Would you like to leave review on wordpress.org about it?” or something like that. Once user clicks the link he won’t be presented the same message (to rate this plugin) again.
    3. Improve plugin search (add new in cms) so those incompatible are no longer listed (if not done yet).

    How this should benefit everyone? Developers get reviews and evaluate how users perceives their product, so they can actually improve it. Users are no longer have to install 100 plugins to get one working because all non-compatible plugins are already marked down and no longer listed in add plugin search list.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

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