• Resolved MKSnMKS

    (@mksnmks)


    Situation;
    Recent versions of WooCommerce have required that woocommerce plugins declare that they are compatible. This declaration is made by setting some tags in the plugin header.

    I have endeavored to inform plugin authors that their plugins were being reported as “unknown compatibility” by WooCommerce.
    Some made appropriate updates, some did not.
    Of those that did not, I was unable to further draw their attention to this, having already started the topic. So for them I wrote a review each, that also attempted to draw their attention to this requirement by WooCommerce.

    It is a good prudent approach to make sure that plugins are compatible, one that would have been great to have right from the start.

    Problem;
    The introduction of the required header tags, has clearly not been noticed by many plugin authors.

    Solution Suggestion;
    Could you (the WooCommerce Team) please carry out a second attempt to make sure that all WooCommerce plugin authors are aware (so they know) of these new requirements, and how to satisfy the requirements?

    Further Appreciation
    1) Plugin Author’s
    Some plugins may well be compatible, and work very well. But they get reported as “Unknown Compatibility” because they have not satisfied these new requirements. Good or excellent as the coding may be, it doesn’t look so good for their expertise.

    2) WooCommerce Users
    When faced with a plugin that is reported as “Unknown Compatibility” a user can do any of the following;
    a) update WooCommerce anyway, and “hope” all goes well.
    b) contact the Plugin Author team, and accept their re-assurance that the plugin is compatible, even though they still do not put out an update that openly declares it to be compatible.
    c) contact the Plugin Author team, and get no result and update WooCommerce anyway, and “hope” all goes well.
    d) contact the Plugin Author team, and try to effect a result, that satisfies the new requirements.
    e) dump plugins which are no-longer compatible
    f) dump WooCommerce and look for other systems and platforms that satisfy the needs that had previously been met.
    g) wait
    h) contact WooCommerce – the upstream cause of these reports, and try to get the problem sorted out.

    It would be a fairly sure bet that a significant number of users are choosing some of these options which may not be secure, or not a prudent habit to get into, especially in this case of WooCommerce being their transactional functions in a business.
    User may be being conditioned to accept less secure relationships between WooCommerce and its Plugins than should be able to be expected, in the interests of remaining in an operational and apparently up to date configuration.

    This particular user prefers a higher level of integrity in the certainty of interconnectedness between the related Plugins, and imagines that WooCommerce would be inclined to have similar leanings.

    So please, if you can, bolster the resilience of the WooCommerce community of plugins, and do what it takes for all the plugin author teams to become cognizant of these new requirements.

    Thank you very much, in anticipation of a full restoration of operational capacity.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Caleb Burks

    (@icaleb)

    Automattic Happiness Engineer

    It’s hard to enforce standards in an open source system like this. If you have any more ideas or such though, then feedback and ideas like this are definitely welcome at the dev chats 🙂

    The next one will be announced here: https://woocommerce.wordpress.com/

    Thread Starter MKSnMKS

    (@mksnmks)

    Hi Caleb Burks (@icaleb),

    Thanks for your help.
    WooCommerce have done well by coming up with this method for helping standardise the system. I am not so sure it is “enforce”ing it, but it is definitely encouraging or inducing it.

    This system could be used for all plugins that have plugins that depend on them, and possibly even for WordPress itself (if it doesn’t already).

    Another extension of this system would be plugins to declare if they have problems or conflict with certain other plugins, so the user can be alerted to potential problems when combinations of plugins arise (ship/deactivate/swap?).

    Main thing about this WooCommerce header tag problem is;
    Please make sure all the plugin author teams ‘know’ about the issue with the header tags declaration of compatibility.

    Not just been slipped an insignificant note somehow, but something that they will definitely read and act on.
    What ever method is used to communicate this information could also be used in future vital improvements to the system, and be a model method for other plugins developers.

    Hope this helps.
    Please can you forward the essence of this to the WooCommerce dev team ?
    Thanks

    • This reply was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by MKSnMKS. Reason: layout
    • This reply was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by MKSnMKS. Reason: made the main point clearer
    Caleb Burks

    (@icaleb)

    Automattic Happiness Engineer

    Declaring conflicts is something that should ideally be done in the plugin, no need to build that part in WC core.

    There isn’t really a channel we can reach all plugin developers, since anybody can release a plugin. I think it will over time increase as plugin authors get pinged by users about their plugin showing up as incompatible/untested. But unfortunately not much more that could be done.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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