New and improved this morning, we have a two-fer.
First, on the extend plugin directory, you may notice some new pie chart fun on the stats tab for each plugin. This shows a percentage breakdown of the versions being actively used by that plugin’s users. Only slices greater than 1.0% are shown.
Secondly, since data kept in a box is not very useful, there’s a new API for getting this data. Usage is fairly obvious from just a simple example, which gets the version breakdown of one of my own plugins:
http://api.wordpress.org/stats/plugin/1.0/simple-facebook-connect?callback=demo
The callback parameter is optional, of course, and provided for people who want JSONP usage.
Note that the version data is relatively new, so we don’t have it for all plugins at present. It will get better as reporting continues. For those interested, it’s saving the total counts of the version numbers as reported by the plugin update-checks over the last week. Since the data at present is only from one day, it’s not very accurate.
Kelvin Jayanoris 1:54 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
Wow, AMAZING. You do all the fun stuff :p
Rich Pedley 1:54 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
Hmm couple of comments
1 – doesn’t show on http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-facebook-connect/
2 – does show here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/eshop/ but the containing box seems to be wider that it should be
3 – multi coloured wheel looks nice but the key needs looking at, can it either list the last 2 versions + the most used version rather then what appears to be a random selection.
4 – http://api.wordpress.org/stats/plugin/1.0/eshop?callback=demo – about half way you’ll see mine appears to be messed up?
5 – are we able to get actual number of installs as well as the % ?
Other than, nice feature
Mo 2:00 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
Nice! This is going to really useful as the plugin developer!
Questions/notes:
(Also: are you working on a secret v500 of SFC that you haven’t released yet?
)
Rich Pedley 2:08 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
my reply seems to have disappeared
1 – please check out: http://api.wordpress.org/stats/plugin/1.0/eshop?callback=demo for possible error (half way)
2 – containing box on the plugin page is a bit wide.
3 – the key is weird, can we have last couple of versions, plus most popular as defaults?
4 – it doesn’t actually appear on your plugin page…
5 – can we get access to actual number as well as the & ?
other than that looks good
Rich Pedley 2:08 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
that & should have been %
Otto 2:11 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
1. Not an error, although some cleanup may be in order. Somewhere, somebody is actually reporting that back to us as the version. I could limit it to numbers only, but then plugin that use something other than numbers in their versions might have a problem.
2. Intentional. Google’s chart API adds huge margins on either side of the stupid thing, so I put in new CSS rules to cut those off the sides and force it back into the right place. Looks good in Chrome, FF, and IE to me.
3. Not sure what “key” you mean here.
4. I see it just fine. Can you give me a link?
5. No.
scribu 2:52 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
2. It looks fine here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-pagenavi/stats/
but it doesn’t seem to be applied on the main plugin page:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-pagenavi/
scribu 2:57 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
Also, I think it would make more sense to put it to the right of the History box, below the bigh bar graph.
Anyway, it’s really nice to have access to this information.
Otto 2:59 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
Yeah, I could put it there (and make it larger). My thinking was that the version information would be useful for users as well as for authors, to know how much usage a plugin got, or how much updating it got, etc.
scribu 3:02 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
Don’t regular users have access to the /stats tab too?
Otto 3:02 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
Yes, they do. I just didn’t think of it.
Rich Pedley 3:24 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
now shows on your plugin, wasn’t before.
the key – the ‘version number color block references’ on the right of the chart, if you look at yours for instance the biggest use by far is 0.21, yet that doesn’t even appear within the key.
The padding/margins around it are still making it stick out of the sidebar .
And I agree the stats tab would be a better place for it, allowing it to be bigger as well. – mine is multi coloured
Otto 3:31 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
Gary 11:31 pm on October 24, 2010 Permalink
You can get a rough estimate of total installs by looking at the API – find the version with the lowest % of installs, this probably corresponds to 1 install. Divide 100 by the % to get a total number of installs.
Notes:
@Otto: It seems Google Sitemap Generator breaks the API call:
http://api.wordpress.org/stats/plugin/1.0/google-sitemap-generator?callback=demo
Otto 11:36 pm on October 24, 2010 Permalink
Gary: if there’s no data, then it returns nothing. Remember that it’s only a couple of days old. I didn’t know what to return for a null result.
Gary 11:40 pm on October 24, 2010 Permalink
That plugin is currently the 4th most popular. It should have data associated with it by now.
Otto 7:04 pm on October 25, 2010 Permalink
Weird. I’ll check it out.
Otto 4:23 pm on October 28, 2010 Permalink
@Gary: This has now been fixed. Most plugins (over 11000) should be showing data now.
Oliver Schlöbe 2:15 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
Thanks a lot, Otto. Pretty much what I’ve been asking for some time ago.
Although it would be more valuable (for the plugin dev) if it would show the versions of those WP environments the plugin is currently installed on. Would make it easier to drop compatibility for versions of WP that aren’t used with the plugin anymore..
Anyways, thanks a lot!
Otto 3:56 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
Moved it to the stats tab. It does make more sense there.
scribu 6:13 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
Neat. It would be great if it could be moved a little higher, so that the ‘Active Versions’ header would have the same baseline as the ‘History’ header.
Another thing would be to make the headers the same size. Don’t know if that’s possible though.
Rich Pedley 7:20 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
looks a lot better, thanks.
Alex M. 6:17 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
It’d be nice if it was sorted by percentage rather than version number I think. For example, why is yellow listed in the key instead of light green? Light green is a larger section:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/vipers-video-quicktags/stats/
For that matter, I think the pie should be sorted by percentage too maybe.
Otto 6:25 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
Actually, I was thinking about doing a reverse sort on the version numbers, since you typically only care about the latest versions anyway.
scribu 6:39 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
+1
Rich Pedley 7:19 pm on October 22, 2010 Permalink
*cough* I asked for that, but would also be nice if the most popular version was in the mix as well.
Pat 6:13 am on October 23, 2010 Permalink
Awesome! Except for the fact that my plugin’s chart looks like a tasty lollipop. We really need to get these users upgraded…
The total # of active users would be a very valuable stat to show alongside downloads. Working on it?
scribu 5:34 pm on October 23, 2010 Permalink
Now that I look at it better, the percentages seem to represent slices of the total download count.
I was under the impression that an “active version” meant the number of users currently using that version on their site.
Otto 2:06 pm on October 24, 2010 Permalink
Nope. Download count is entirely separate. This is using the data from the plugin update-check.
scribu 2:26 pm on October 24, 2010 Permalink
So, on Front-end Editor when I hover over the largest slice, I get this:
What does 28.141 represent?
Otto 2:35 pm on October 24, 2010 Permalink
The 28.141 is the actual percentage. The other number is different because I cut out everything less than 1.0%. So the total percentage I’m showing is actually less than 100%, which is then getting stretched to 100%.
scribu 3:14 pm on October 24, 2010 Permalink
Ok, thanks for the explanation. Would be great if it would display the actual number of users though.
Scott 7:37 pm on October 23, 2010 Permalink
Awesome feature, thanks for making this! FYI: it renders poorly in IE9 without compatibility mode enabled.
Aaron Jorbin 8:01 pm on October 23, 2010 Permalink
Thanks for doing this! Out of curiosity, is this based on all sites with each plugin it installed or activated?
Otto 2:06 pm on October 24, 2010 Permalink
The numbers come from the sites where it is activated, not just installed.
Maurice 1:09 pm on October 24, 2010 Permalink
Very nice feature! I have noticed few things :
1/ There are usually way more active versions than plugins download. Does this mean that the download count only count the users that clicked on the download link and not the one that are directly installing the plugin from the WP built in installer?
2/ The askimet stats have apparently an issue : active versions for 2.4.0 : 28.26 (should miss some numbers).
Otto 2:09 pm on October 24, 2010 Permalink
1. I don’t understand what you mean. You can’t have more active versions than total downloads. And no, the download count includes direct downloads as well.
2. I see nothing wrong there. What do you mean?
Maurice 3:06 pm on October 24, 2010 Permalink
1. If you do sum of active versions for some plugins, you will see that it is well above the total downloads… Sometimes 3 or 4 times…
2. Check out the askimet stats page, release 2.4.0 is active on 28.26, it should probably 28.261 or 28.262… It is just missing the trailing number.
Otto 3:07 pm on October 24, 2010 Permalink
Those are percentages, not raw counts. And it’s not missing the trailing number, the value is 28.260, so the zero doesn’t need to be shown.
Maurice 3:49 pm on October 24, 2010 Permalink
There are two numbers, one is the percentage but the other one is a count, isn’t it? You have for each pie : the release number, the active version count and then between parenthesis, the percentage the active version count represents in the overall count, isn’t it? If this is the case, then the raw count for Askimet is wrong. It shows 28.26 (29,4%).
scribu 3:51 pm on October 24, 2010 Permalink
See above: http://wpdevel.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/new-and-improved-this-morning-we-have-a/#comment-11842
Otto 3:58 pm on October 24, 2010 Permalink
No, they’re both percentages.
I just don’t display any slice of the real pie smaller than 1%. The first number (the 28.26) is the actual percentage of the data. It’s the value you care about.
The second number (the 29.4%) is the percentage that that slice in the pie you’re seeing actually represents.
Because I’m cutting out some of the data (any slice less than 1%), the remaining data expands to fill the pie. Thus the number is slightly higher, but it is not significant enough of a difference to actually worry about.
There is no “raw count” anywhere on that version number chart. The raw count is not data that will be made available.
Maurice 4:44 pm on October 24, 2010 Permalink
Ok got it, it is a bit confusing like this even if it very valuable data! Why don’t you want to display the raw count? It would be very interesting data as well and won’t break any privacy as you aren’t displaying which blog is using it…
Matt 6:26 pm on October 24, 2010 Permalink
The raw numbers bounce around a bit, but the percentages are usually consistent.
Maurice 1:09 pm on October 25, 2010 Permalink
We won’t blame anybody if the numbers aren’t 100% accurate. More than the raw numbers, it is the trend that is interesting. Perhaps you could provide the global number of blogs on which the plugin is installed, this would be maybe simpler and less subject to error. Would be nice anyway
Anyway, many thanks for this new feature, very valuable! Congrats folks!
Matt 6:39 pm on October 25, 2010 Permalink
Hopefully in the future we’ll be able to show rankings and rough %s.
anmari 12:42 am on October 25, 2010 Permalink
Hi, just wondering whether there is a problem here, or whether I am missing something? Would love to see this data, and would appreciate if someone would enlighten me.
Visibility of Pie chart, Google response?
I understand that version data is not available for all plugins, but I have only managed to see the “pie chart” once for one plugin at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/vipers-video-quicktags/stats/ and once I navigated away (tried one of my plugins of course, nothing there, tried others mentioned above, nothing there (yet others had obviously seen pie charts), came back to viper, but now no chart, then just had a long… “transferring data” which is also what I was getting with others.
Maybe the pie charts should be cached in case the google chart api fails?
API access
I assumed maybe problem was with the google chart api response, so thought I’d see if I could get the stats via the api mentioned above, since without the chart api the data is not visible. I assumed that it would work similar to other wp api call’s (version check and plugin search/info calls). No matter what plugin slug I use from thos ementioned above or akismet, eg:
http://api.wordpress.org/stats/plugin/1.0/simple-facebook-connect or
http://api.wordpress.org/stats/plugin/1.0/eshop
I get an empty OK response?
array(4) { ["headers"]=> array(5) { ["content-type"]=> string(9) “text/html” ["content-length"]=> string(1) “0″ ["date"]=> string(29) “Mon, 25 Oct 2010 00:28:45 GMT” ["server"]=> string(9) “LiteSpeed” ["connection"]=> string(5) “close” } ["body"]=> string(0) “” ["response"]=> array(2) { ["code"]=> int(200) ["message"]=> string(2) “OK” } ["cookies"]=> array(0) { } }
Otto 9:03 pm on October 28, 2010 Permalink
There were some problems with this which I’ve since solved. You should get a valid response for almost all of the plugins now.
duck_ 7:01 pm on October 25, 2010 Permalink
Looks like you might have noticed judging by the data shown in http://api.wordpress.org/stats/plugin/1.0/simple-facebook-connect, but is it possible to cut out invalid version numbers (e.g. 500.0 in SFC)
Otto 7:03 pm on October 25, 2010 Permalink
Yes, but it’s not something I’m going to do yet. I want to see what builds up after being there a whole week. After that I’ll work on filtering to eliminate strangeness.
duck_ 7:04 pm on October 25, 2010 Permalink
Thanks
David Artiss 7:19 am on October 26, 2010 Permalink
Otto – this is really useful, as a plugin developer, to see this information.
One question, though – is there anywhere I can go to find out more information about other WordPress.org API calls like this one? I’d like to be able to access other plugin information but the api.wordpress.org site shows that there is currently no documentation.
Thanks.
Otto 9:11 pm on October 28, 2010 Permalink
Yeah. We really should document those.
Ade 12:49 pm on October 31, 2010 Permalink
Great tool for plugin developers, Otto. Thanks! I’ve been hoping for something like this for a long time.
Jeff Lambert 7:02 am on November 19, 2010 Permalink
Otto – Thanks for your work on this. Looks like I jumped on the plugin development bandwagon at the right time. Here’s a thought. I know you aren’t showing slices < 1.0% and, instead, are stretching the other slices of the pie to make up for this. Instead of doing that why not add all these slivers together and put them into an "Others" slice? Just a thought.
Otto 4:00 am on November 20, 2010 Permalink
I could do that for the display, sure. Note that the API call returns all the (valid) numbers, not just those above 1.0.
Michael Torbert 12:53 am on November 20, 2010 Permalink
Not sure how I missed this. Thanks!
Jeff Lambert 6:04 pm on December 11, 2010 Permalink
So, the output on the stats tab, and via the specific plugin URL seems to flip around quite a bit and today I’m getting a return that 100% of my install base is on a rather old version, which I definitely know is not the case. Is this code still moving around a lot? Any idea when it will be locked down as I can’t say I’m happy when I go to the plugin on wordpress.com and see that 100% is v1.0.2 when the current version is 1.1.2. Let me know how it’s going. Thanks
Otto 9:01 pm on December 11, 2010 Permalink
Nope, code is solid. What plugin?
Jeff Lambert 1:46 am on December 12, 2010 Permalink
Hi Otto,
This one: http://api.wordpress.org/stats/plugin/1.0/webphysiology-portfolio?callback=demo
Let me know,
Jeff
Otto 3:25 am on December 12, 2010 Permalink
Not enough users. The database only shows 9 reported active installs in the last week. And versions with counts of 1 are ignored.
Note that some data may have been lost a few days ago, when I was making some other stats changes. This will self-correct as time goes by and sites do update checks.
Jeff Lambert 6:27 pm on December 12, 2010 Permalink
Gotcha. Are there other APIs into the stats? Like you’re able to see counts but I believe I can only see percentages. Would be nice to know how many folks actually have it installed verses how many folks have downloaded it. Not that I’d want others to see this info necessarily but from a perspective of how much ongoing effort to put in or as an indication to maybe review it for improvements…. Thanks for this!
Alex M. 2:22 am on December 13, 2010 Permalink
You should read the previous comments on this post. Counts are purposefully not revealed.
Jeff Lambert 6:36 am on December 13, 2010 Permalink
Thanks Alex, I had read this a back in October. My question was around whether there were other APIs, outside of the one in this topic, that would provide more details. Numbers would be nice. I can understand why specific domains might not be shared but seems like sharing numbers with developers isn’t a bad thing. After all, this is “open” source, right?