Make WordPress.org

Welcome to the MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. Team!

The Meta team is responsible for maintaining and managing WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ websites. Our work is mostly done on the meta trac. If you see a bug, file a ticket!

We’re currently working on these fine projects, with more in store.

Check out our handbook to learn how to get involved.

The next pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. directory chat will be at 22:00:00 2016-11-09 UTC in the #meta channel. Please remember to allow for recent time zone changes.

Topics will include user testing, which began this week, and search testing.

#plugin-directory #meta

With the advent of the new Plugin Directory, I wanted to get some basic user testing in place to help guide UXUX UX is an acronym for User Experience - the way the user uses the UI. Think ‘what they are doing’ and less about how they do it. decisions. Props to @designsimply for helping me with the tasks, and to @tellyworth for making sure functionality was up-to-par for testing.

In this test, I wanted to observe the user’s ability to easily find a pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party., and verify which metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. information helped the user select the best plugin for their use.

Tasks

Find an SEO plugin you think would be the best solution for your website, and talk through the reasons why you’d pick that one
What would be the next step you would take to install the plugin on your site? [Verbal Response]
How was your experience finding this plugin? [Verbal Response]
Locate the Plugin Search Field and search for a plugin that will add an image slider to your website.
Are you able to make an informed decision from the search results page? Why, or why not? [Verbal Response]
If you haven’t already, click on the plugin that you like best to view the details.
Looking at this Plugin Detail page, how do you feel about the content layout and organization? Is there anything you might improve? Is there anything that is unclear? [Verbal Response]
What are the top 3-4 things on this page that influence your decisions when selecting a plugin? [Verbal Response]
Please share your overall experience with this process. Was there anything you’d like to see improved? Was there anything you thought particularly helpful? [Verbal Response]

Video

User Testing Round 1

Notes

[1:48] After browsing, user decides to search for ‘SEO’
[2:07] User looks at ratings as a good indicator for which plugin is best b/c other people tried it out and were satisfied.
[3:17] User still doesn’t seem to have enough information to choose a plugin directly from search results page.
[4:21] User clicked to check negative reviews and ended up at older layout for plugins reviews.
[6:11] User is highly influenced by ratings above all else.
[7:14] User checks “last updated” as well at this point.
[8:33] User would download plugin and figure out how to install it. He didn’t see any instructions in the ‘description’.
[9:09] User uses ‘search’ as an option when he’s “stuck”. He prefers browsing first, and then later searches.
[10:23] User found the Plugin Search quite easily but then gets confused seeing another search field above it in the headerHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes.. He expected it to be in top right corner.
[12:21] Not enough info on search results page to make an informed decision.
[15:09] User says layout is pretty typical on the Detail page.
[16:10] Bringing negative reviews closer to the top would be helpful for this user.
[16:30] Top 3-4 things this user relies on for selecting a plugin are: 1. Ratings, 2. Last updated, 3. Description/Feature list, 4. Maybe FAQs?
[18:31] Overall experience was “fine”. Easy to find plugins. Providing more meaningful descriptions would be helpful b/c they all kinda looked the same in the short descriptions.

#design, #plugin-directory, #user-testing

We’ll skip this week and make the next #plugin-directory chat after the DST change in many locations: 2016-11-02 22:00:00 UTC. Agenda TBD.

We’ll have a quick chat about the #plugin-directory at 2016-10-20 00:00 UTC in #meta.

No fixed agenda, just some brief updates.

#meta

The weekly pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. directory chat will be at 2016-10-13 00:00 UTC, in #meta on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.

This week we’ll chat about user testing goals, and the new tickets and progress since the last chat.

#plugin-directory

#meta

The next pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. directory chat will be at 2016-10-06 00:00 UTC, in #meta on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. Here’s a very broad agenda for now:

Review the current milestone.
Plan the next milestone.

Suggestions for specific agenda items are welcome – we have plenty of time before then. See you in chat.

#plugin-directory

#meta

Over the weekend, I did the following:

Correlated existing ratings with the new post id and updated the ratings table. This script took about twice as long as expected to run, but all star ratings now have the correct post id in the ratings table.
Tested ratings code changes that use the new post id.
Imported all user favorites.
Forum optimization. I’m still figuring out what queries are inefficient and patching around those. While not a visible feature, this should lead to a better experience for everyone.

I am currently running an import for user subscriptions to open topics. The information for subscriptions to closed topics still exists, but importing this is a lower priority since by their nature, these topics will not have any more activity. This *will not* overwrite but will add old topic subscriptions (with the new topic id) to any that a user has added since the move.

Subscription import code must be tested and re-tested (and re-re-tested) before running an import; adding the wrong subscriptions would potentially spam hundreds of thousands of users with unwanted updates to topics.

Top priorities for today are:

Adding stars and ratings to existing templates (@jmdodd)
Opening ratings for new topics/ratings. (@jmdodd)
Adding the ability to edit ratings. (@jmdodd)
Importing user subscriptions to topics. (@jmdodd)
Importing user subscriptions to topic tags. (@jmdodd)
Importing user subscriptions to plugins. (@jmdodd)
Fixing RSS feeds. (In progress, some improvement.) (@jmdodd)

Next priorities will be:

Activating pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party./theme subscriptions. (@jmdodd)
Ability to resolve topics for plugin/theme authors. (@jmdodd)
Plugin author/committer support views. (@jmdodd)
Plugin/theme stickies (this should also fix the unpinned topics in plugin forums — that data was moved, it just isn’t being used). (@jmdodd)
Fixing plugin-directory and theme-directory review connections. (@coffee2code)
Plugin/theme author/contributor badges. (@coffee2code)

One-offs:

Fix profile fave/sub/topics/replies management url. (@jmdodd)
Prevent users from changing the forum of theme/plugin topics. (@jmdodd)

Agenda for this week’s meeting on September 1, 2016 at 00:00 UTC:

Review Milestone 7.
Plan Milestone 8 from existing tickets.
Review remaining feedback items from Open BetaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process..
Open Floor.

We’ll be meeting in #meta on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. If you have anything to propose to add to the agenda, please leave a comment below.

See you in the chat!

#plugin-directory

#meta

In preparing to do some relevancy testing of the new WordPress.org plugin search here is some data analysis of the search logs from the existing plugin search. This data and the search logs should help us improve the search query more methodically, but it may also be of use when thinking about the overall search user experience.

Aggregated Stats

53 days of aggregated, anonymized search records with 4,952,788 total searches and 805,488 unique searches. This excludes APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. searches(*)
Almost 100k searches a day on average.
Focusing on en_US: 499,489 unique searches from 3,929,003 total searches
Top 100 en_US terms: 944,243 searches (24% of the total)
Top 1000 en_US terms: 1,834,942 total searches (46.7% of the total)
Bottom 400k en_US terms: 479,604 searches (12.2% of total)
320,390 en_US terms occurred once in 53 days (8.1% of total)
472,500 en_US terms occurred ten times or less 839,123 total (21% of total)
492,500 en_US terms occur less than once a day 1271786 total (32% of total)
245,151 of 472,500 search queries pass aspell (though aspell is limited, there are lots of fun spelling mistakes “composor”, “conditon”, “taxanomy”, “produkt”)
Here is a random set of queries that only occurred once in the 53 days to get a sense of what the long tail of queries looks like.

Non-English data is a little hard to draw conclusions from because there aren’t currently any search indices for non-English languages. So the top searches in other languages look about the same as English. About 20% of all searches are not in English. Here are the search counts by language. This likely undercounts the demand since search in non-English languages almost certainly don’t work well.

(*) A very large volume of searches come through the API, but a lot of these appear to be bots or direct lookups of an exact pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. name rather than organic search results. These should be looked at separately and should maybe not use the same search query.

Some Takeaways from the Data

Hopefully from this data it is clear why we can’t just focus on the top 100 queries. Doing so ignores probably 75% of our users. Even top 1000 is less than 50% of all searches. So in testing out our search quality at the very least we should look at top 1000. Ideally we’ll also do some random sampling of the other 50% of searches and find ways to address spelling mistakes and other edge cases that affect a very large percentage of users. Similarly, adding better support for non-English languages could help as many users as improving the top 100 queries.

#plugin-directory

The Support Forums will be undergoing scheduled maintenance beginning at 01 September 2016 14:00 UTC. During this window, they will be read-only; support will still be available via IRC.

Topics older than two months have been marked as closed so that they can be imported prior to the window. You will still be able to create new topics and reply to recent topics until the window begins.

All public topics and replies are being moved over to bbPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org 2. Because ratings and reviews are used by both the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. and theme directories, they will be moved over after the maintenance window so that all of the code can be updated. This means that you will not be able to rate or review a plugin or theme until 05 September 2016 to allow time for code updates in all of the relevant directories.

The maintenance window will end at 01 September 2016 20:00 UTC.

#forums

Make WordPress.org

Welcome to the MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. Team!

Contact

Plugin Directory chat 2016-11-09