Jennifer M. Dodd 9:18 pm on June 6, 2016
Tags:   

WordPress.org Forums: User Meta

My self-set deadline for the successful conversion of three forums was last Friday. I did successfully import the pt.forums.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/ forum by the deadline, but restricted the import set to only include content and tags. I did not update subscriptions and favorites because it was a test upgrade, but I will include those in a final scheduled upgrade. No one will lose their subscriptions or favorites during this move.

The import class that I am using needs to scale so that it works with the https://wordpress.org/support forum, which has over ten million posts. There are already some cracks showing when dealing with user roles across the forums because of the shared user tables which allow one user to have a role on multiple forums and blogs on the WordPress.org sites. In the import class, I use the existing bbPress queries as a basis for custom MySQL INSERT VALUES statements, which combine many small INSERTs into far fewer database writes. This has given me some insight into queries that will not perform well against the larger support forum dataset.

Favorites are stored solely in user metadata and keyed by forum in both bbPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org 1 and bbPress 2. This is a fairly simple query against the usermeta table as it is fetched on a per-user basis.

bbPress 1 stores user subscriptions as taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies. terms. As the importer class adds topics and their associated terms to the new site tables, it stores subscriptions as a temporary array of user ids in the postmeta for that topic. Once a forum is upgraded, I can page through the topic postmeta and add the appropriate subscriptions on a user-by-user basis.

In bbPress 2, subscriptions for forums are stored in the usermeta table and are fetched for a given topic using a FIND_IN_SET MySQLMySQL MySQL is a relational database management system. A database is a structured collection of data where content, configuration and other options are stored. https://www.mysql.com flag. We end up having to traverse all of the user subscriptions for a given forum in order to find the subscriptions for a single topic. This query is performed in bbPress 2 whenever new topic or reply notifications are sent. Given the size of the support forumSupport Forum WordPress Support Forums is a place to go for help and conversations around using WordPress. Also the place to go to report issues that are caused by errors with the WordPress code and implementations., I cannot see this query scaling well for forum and topic subscriptions.

After a conversation with @jjj about optimizing this in bbPress, he opened a new issue to handle improving user subscription and favorite queries. I will continue to upgrade forums using the old style of favorite and subscription storage, but will also be working on that TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. ticket in order to allow subscriptions to work on large forum datasets.

How does this affect the conversion milestones?

I will still be converting a number of WordPress.org forums to their bbPress 2 equivalent, including their users’ current subscriptions and favorites. It takes the import class less than fifteen minutes to run on a forum with approximately ten thousand posts and the associated terms, with a lot of sleep()s thrown in “just in case”. User 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. will add to that, but not much.

The upgrade process should run as follows:

  • Post to forum with a scheduled time and date for the upgrade. I will try to schedule upgrades for local off-hours.
  • Close forum to new posts when scheduled. It will still be searchable and available until the redirects are in place.
  • Run the upgrade script.
  • Confirm that redirects are in place for *.forums.wordpress.org to *.wordpress.org/support. At this point, the old forum will redirect users to the newly upgraded forum.

Larger forum imports will require backfilling the majority of the forum while it is still live, then doing a partial import of those topics and replies that were not backfilled. After that, the usermeta import can be staged for forum roles, favorites, and subscriptions.

July 1st is still the deadline for 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. conversion; most of the overhead is now in working on plugins, as the import script runs fairly quickly and can do forum conversions “live”.

#forums

Samuel Sidler 9:56 pm on May 20, 2016
Tags:   

Taxonomies in the Plugin Directory

Since my last post, I’ve been doing some thinking and digging into taxonomies on 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. directory. There were a few common complaints about rethinking “tags” in the plugin directory. They boiled down to a few specific points:

  • I need to mark my plugin as built for [plugin name].
  • I need to note which WordPress features my plugin supports.
  • TagTag Tag is one of the pre-defined taxonomies in WordPress. Users can add tags to their WordPress posts along with categories. However, while a category may cover a broad range of topics, tags are smaller in scope and focused to specific topics. Think of them as keywords used for topics discussed in a particular post. pages are currently well-placed in search engine results and changing or removing them could lower my ranking.
  • As a result of the above, among other things, three is not enough.

This post will walk through a bit more detail on our thinking and address those points.

The plugin directory was created to showcase free and open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. plugins from all over, bringing them together to make it easier for WordPress users to customize their WordPress installations. As its grown to over 40,000 plugins, it’s gotten harder and harder for users to find the Right Plugin. While initially helpful, tags have become a free-for-all to indicate an assortment of things. Going forward, we’d like to re-focus our taxonomies to make it easier for users to find quality plugins.

In an ideal world, a plugin’s readme would detail all of its features and the plugin directory search would parse the readme well. We’re moving toward that ideal world. Our current search, powered by Sphinx, is being replaced by ElasticSearch, which will yield far better results.

However, parsing readme files is not the only method for classifying things. We have a wonderful feature in WordPress called “taxonomies” that can both assist search and make it easier for users to find specific plugins. So, let’s use them!

I’d like to propose three separate taxonomies (more on each below):

  1. Categories
  2. Built For
  3. Business model

Here’s a bit more detail on each taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies..

Categories

Categories are the new tags. In fact, we’ll automatically map most tags to categories so plugin authors don’t have to.

With great help, I went through the top 1000 terms currently in use in the plugin directory and attempted to categorize them. Many of them are not useful and should not be categorized (here’s looking at you “post” and “plugin“). But most of them categorize quite well into these 26 categories (an initial attempt):

  • AccessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) – Plugins that improve accessibility.
  • Advertising – Including affiliates.
  • Analytics – Including statistics, counters, and the like.
  • Arts & Entertainment – Sports, games, movies.
  • Authentication – Login, registration, OAuth, OpenID.
  • Business – Real estate, travel, restaurants.
  • Calendar & Events – Including scheduling, booking, clocks, and appointments.
  • Communication – Email, chat, newsletters, subscriptions.
  • Contact Forms – ‘Nuff said.
  • Customization – Templates, sidebars, CustomizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings., widgets.
  • Discussion & Community – Comments, forums, BuddyPress.
  • eCommerce – Shopping, payments, billing, invoicing.
  • Editor & Writing – Writing, editing, TinyMCE.
  • Education & Support – Including help desk, wiki, and dictionary.
  • Language Tools – Multilingual tools.
  • Maps & Location – Plugins that geolocate or map.
  • Media – Galleries, carousels, sliders, etc.
  • MultisiteMultisite Multisite is a WordPress feature which allows users to create a network of sites on a single WordPress installation. Available since WordPress version 3.0, Multisite is a continuation of WPMU or WordPress Multiuser project. WordPress MultiUser project was discontinued and its features were included into WordPress core. Advanced Administration Handbook -> Create A Network. – Plugins which are built to improve and enhance networks.
  • Performance – Cache, monitoring, maintenance.
  • Ratings & Reviews – Including polls, testimonials, and recommendations.
  • Security & Spam Protection – SSLSSL Secure Socket Layer - Encryption from the server to the browser and back. Prevents prying eyes from seeing what you are sending between your browser and the server., HTTPSHTTPS HTTPS is an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure. HTTPS is the secure version of HTTP, the protocol over which data is sent between your browser and the website that you are connected to. The 'S' at the end of HTTPS stands for 'Secure'. It means all communications between your browser and the website are encrypted. This is especially helpful for protecting sensitive data like banking information., firewalls.
  • SEO & Marketing – Including sitemaps and OpenGraph.
  • Social & Sharing – All the sharing plugins for all the social networks, including OEmbed.
  • Taxonomy – Custom taxonomies, tag clouds.
  • User Management – Membership, profiles, CRMs.
  • Utilities – Import, export, calculators, debugging, offline.

We can – and should – debate the specific naming of these categories. However, for this post, consider the general “buckets” created by each categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging.. We have plenty of time to paint the bike shed. 😉

Why move from free-form tags to categories? Moving to categories allows us to feature specific categories on the plugin directory home page. For example, in the future, we’ll be able to update the homepage on a regular basis to show “Trending [Category] Plugins.”

Categories are also considerably more familiar to users today. This is well-evidenced by mobile app stores like Google Play and iTunes, where users find it easy to explore and find new apps for their devices.

What about tag pages? These will no longer exist, but they can be forwarded to the relevant searches.

Wait! Don’t comment yet. Keep reading. 🙂

Built For

Plugins often need a way to indicate they’re built for another plugin. WordPress does not have a dependency system and this blog post is not the right place to lobby for one. However, the plugin directory currently allows plugins, through the use of tags, to indicate that they are built for another plugin.

For example, all plugins that are built for Contact Form 7, currently indicate so with the contact-form-7 tag. This can get messy, as seen in the search results.

The new directory will, instead, introduce a new taxonomy that allows the plugin author to select a plugin they’re “built for” in the plugin admin. This will not be a free form area. Instead, it will allow you to choose a specific plugin that is already in the directory.

Business Model

Finally, Matt forwarded some user feedback and challenged the team to come up with a way for authors to indicate what business model their plugin operates under.

As you can see from the prototypes, we’ve been experimenting with how this will look like, with the likely addition of an explanatory tooltip and/or page. Terminology-wise, I propose we adopt the following terms:

  • Service – Utilizes external services to operate. Some functionality may be available without sign up.
  • Lite – A premium version (or add-on) is available for purchase from the developer.

Plugins with neither of these restrictions would not need to add either term. This new taxonomy would be opt-in and plugin authors will be responsible for adding the relevant term.

Adding these two terms will go a long to helping users understand a plugin’s requirements.

Your Input Matters

Please take a moment and consider everything in this post. If you’re a plugin author, consider how your plugin(s) fits into the above categories, as well as if and how it uses the other two taxonomies. Then… leave your comments and questions! Your feedback is what helps makes the plugin directory great. 🙂

A big, big thank you to both @ipstenu and @aaroncampbell for their input, help, and support on coming up with the proposals above.

#plugin-directory

Mark Uraine 9:41 pm on May 20, 2016
Tags: ,   

Plugin Directory Prototypes (Single View)

Yesterday, you saw the mockups and prototypes of 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. Directory homepage and search results. Today, I’d like to share the “single view” plugin page mockup. The single view is the primary page for all plugins.

Like the earlier mockups, the content is not accurate and the entire page is still undergoing changes.

Prototypes

You can play around with the prototype here: http://codepen.io/mapk/full/YqJezm/

Screenshot

Single View

Single View

Notes

  1. Many details are still being worked out.
  2. Some views still need to be created, like the ‘Reviews’ and ‘Support’ views.
  3. The ability to ‘favorite’ a plugin still needs to be designed.
  4. The ‘Ratings’ section is far from complete.

#design, #plugin-directory

Mark Uraine 6:57 pm on May 19, 2016
Tags: ,   

Plugin Directory Prototypes

When we created the design for the ‘Get WordPress’ page, it was meant to set a new design standard for 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/ sites. As a result, here are here are some new designs for the home page and search results page of 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. Directory.

Keep in mind that these are still preliminary and the content is not accurate.

Prototypes

You can play around with the prototypes here:

Screenshots

Homepage

Homepage

Search Results

Search Results

 

Notes

  1. Homepage
    1. Again, individual plugin information is not accurate.
    2. The terminology for “pro” and “light” are explorations for design purposes. (Look for a taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies. post on this blog in the near future.)
    3. The three sections at the bottom will have links to their respective subpages.
  2. Search Results
    1. Typing a keyword in the search field will replace the content area with search results.
    2. Pagination still needs some work.

We continue to iterate quickly and a second post on the design of the plugin detail page is forthcoming.

If you have any feedback on the design, please comment below. We’d love to know what you think! 🙂

#design, #plugin-directory

Jennifer M. Dodd 3:24 pm on May 19, 2016
Tags: , ,   

WordPress.org Forums Upgrade

The 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/ support forums are currently powered by a very outdated version of bbPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org 1.x. Per the 2015 WordPress Community Summit, the forums need to be upgraded to bbPress 2.x so that they can easily be maintained by the community. Part of the delay has been that the forums rely on many custom plugins to make them manageable; some of these plugins have already been ported to bbPress 2.x; the rest will be ported as part of Milestone 2 during the testing period on volunteer upgraded forums.

Scope

  • Upgrade the support forums and international forums from bbPress 1.x to bbPress 2.x.
  • Port any remaining plugins from bbPress 1.x to bbPress 2.x and release them under the GPLGPL GPL is an acronym for GNU Public License. It is the standard license WordPress uses for Open Source licensing https://wordpress.org/about/license/. The GPL is a ‘copyleft’ license https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html. This means that derivative work can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD license and the MIT License are widely used examples..
  • Integrate the support forums with the theme and 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. directories via custom taxonomies.

Below is a general overview of the steps necessary to upgrade all of the forums on WordPress.org to bbPress 2.x from bbPress 1.x. Much of the work will be involve exporting and updating large quantities of information in bbPress 1.x tables to the WordPress-compatible bbPress 2.x schema — in one case, more than ten million rows of topics and replies. For these steps, I will look at the existing bbPress upgrade converter available but may fall back to a clone and rewrite via the command-line, since the new forum tables will not be in use and can be locked for writes. The goal is to perform upgrades with a minimum of downtime by backfilling most of the forum data and then performing an incremental import to bring it up to date with the existing forum.

Proposal

Milestone 0: Due 2016/05/25

Create a forum provisioning plugin to allow quick creation of forum sites in the WordPress.org multisiteMultisite Multisite is a WordPress feature which allows users to create a network of sites on a single WordPress installation. Available since WordPress version 3.0, Multisite is a continuation of WPMU or WordPress Multiuser project. WordPress MultiUser project was discontinued and its features were included into WordPress core. Advanced Administration Handbook -> Create A Network. environment.

Milestone 1: Due 2016/06/03

Migrate three existing bbPress 1.x forums to bbPress 2.x. The migrationMigration Moving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies. process will need to scale to eventually handle the support forumSupport Forum WordPress Support Forums is a place to go for help and conversations around using WordPress. Also the place to go to report issues that are caused by errors with the WordPress code and implementations. (including plugins and themes). During the migration, verify that user capabilities, moderator capabilities, metadata, and encoding are preserved. Create any user metadata filters necessary to avoid overloading the master usermeta table with default values.

  • I’m looking for volunteer bbPress 1.x forums who would like to upgrade to bbPress 2. Qualifications include moderator consensus and having fewer than 10k combined topics and posts. Extended characters sets welcome (and encouraged) as part of this test group. Forums will be available for testing by moderators prior to being turned live, but this will be definitely be a 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. test environment.

Milestone 2: Due 2016/07/01

Port remaining plugins to bbPress 2.x while testing performance on upgraded 2.x forums.

Milestone 3: Due 2016/07/15

Migrate remaining international forums to bbPress 2.x.

Milestone 4: Due 2016/07/22

Create theme/plugin taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies. handling for the support forum.

Milestone 5: Due 2016/08/05

Migrate sample data for support/plugins/themes forum. Test and iterate on plugin and theme integration.

Milestone 6: Due 2016/08/19

Migrate support forums.

Stretch Goal

There are many open Trac tickets for the forums that have been waiting on the upgrade to bbPress 2.x.

I’ll be available 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/ in the #meta channel. Progress on each milestone will be documented in Trac and in an accompanying P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org post. If you have any questions or concerns, just reach out here in the comments or in #meta on Slack.

#forums, #i18n

Konstantin Obenland 6:32 pm on May 5, 2016
Tags:   

Plugin Directory Chat Summary (5/4)

This is a summary of 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. Directory chat from May 4. (Slack log)

Attendees: @dd32, @hardeepasrani, @matheuswd, @smartcat, @samuelsidler, @mapk, @pento, @obenland

Topics:

  • Tagging system
    Te revamp the current system it needs to be replaced with a set list of tags from which plugins can choose, and the various taxonomies that might be needed independently of those tags should be listed.
    One such taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies. would be for the free/light/pro classification, another one could be along the lines of “Built for: [Plugin name]” which takes into consideration plugins that require or are “built for” other plugins (like WooCommerce). These all would be defined in wp-admin, just like tags. @samuelsidler will work up another post for make/plugins to propose and communicate that.
  • Review M2
    Major efforts on the Reviewer Admin (#1570) have come to a close. Any bugs or missing features should be tackled in new tickets. Work on the Plugins 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. unit test (#1614) will continue in M3, in parallel with the new Plugins API (#1579) itself.
  • Plan M3
    In addition to the tickets mentioned above, #1686, #1688, #1689, and #1690 were added to the milestone. These are all smaller tickets for issues discovered by @ipstenu during her testing. This will be a short milestone as most folks who work on the project will be doing a support week next week. The plugin review team was invited to test the new directory. Tickets resulting from that might be pulled into the milestone as they are filed, depending on severity and size of the fix.

The next meeting is on Thursday May 12, 00:00 UTC.

#plugin-directory

Konstantin Obenland 8:04 pm on April 29, 2016
Tags:   

Plugin Directory v3 Chat Summary

This is a summary of the Plugin Directory chat from April 27. (Slack log)

Attendees: @ipstenu, @matt, @obenland, @clorith, @dd32, @pento, @tellyworth

Topics:

  • Tagging system
    @matt encouraged the participants to figure out a tagging system that gives people a better understanding what’s behind the installation of 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.. Something along the lines of a Free/Light/Pro classification, that illustrates the difference between (for example) Vaultpress (have to pay), Akismet (should pay if large), and Jetpack (no pay). This could be separate from the proposed 3-tag-limit and be based on an honor system starting out.
  • Determine what it means if a plugin is truly published
    After a detailed discussion about possible solutions and their repercussions around this topic, participants came to the conclusion that plugins should be approved, which triggers approval email and the creation of the SVNSVN Apache Subversion (often abbreviated SVN, after its command name svn) is a software versioning and revision control system. Software developers use Subversion to maintain current and historical versions of files such as source code, web pages, and documentation. Its goal is to be a mostly compatible successor to the widely used Concurrent Versions System (CVS). WordPress core and the wordpress.org released code are all centrally managed through SVN. https://subversion.apache.org/. repo, but need an initial commit, to be switched to publish and actually show up in the directory. The goal is to ensure plugin authors are at least familiar enough with SVN to make a commit, to reduce support burden after mass emails to plugin authors that ask them to update in preparation of a major releaseMajor Release A set of releases or versions having the same major version number may be collectively referred to as “X.Y” -- for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, and all other versions in the 5.2. (five dot two dot) branch of that software. Major Releases often are the introduction of new major features and functionality..
  • Tickets for M2
    After committing the updates to reflect the changes decided on above, #1570 should be ready to go and considered fixed. @dd32 already fixed #1575, and @tellywoth and @pento anticipate #1574 and #1614 respecitvely to be finished by next week. Dion has started thinking about #1579 and has a shortlist of items containing Favorites, Contributors, Zips, Screenshots, and Stats pages. @obenland will look at the remaining ticket #1572. @mapk will be working on design mockups for the new front-end, and @ocean90 offered post-meeting to be available for any translation-related questions @tellyworth might have.

The next meeting is on Thursday May 5, 00:00 UTC.

#plugin-directory

Konstantin Obenland 8:52 pm on April 27, 2016
Tags:   

Weekly Plugin Directory v3 Chat

I’ve not been very good in making sure there’s a weekly chat for the work on the new 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. No more! With a new and improved meeting time of Thursday, 00:00 UTC I think we should be set for regular updates going forward.

Today’s agenda:

  • Determine what it means if a plugin is truly published (published plugin post and tagged version). See https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/1570#comment:65
  • Review progress on tickets slated for M2.
  • Open discussion

#plugin-directory

Mark Uraine 7:52 pm on April 18, 2016
Tags: ,   

Final Mockups for ‘Get WordPress’

Working on this project has been a fun and creative journey and both @hugobaeta and I have made some great breakthroughs on the design direction for 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/. Below are the final round of mockups (text still subject to change).

(Want background on this post? Check out the IA post, followed by the initial mockups.)

‘Get WordPress’ landing page (located at /get/)

Get WordPress - Mobile View

Mobile

Get WordPress - Desktop

Desktop

‘Get WordPress’ subpage

Mobile - Closed Nav

Mobile – Closed Nav

Mobile - Open Nav

Mobile – Open Nav

Desktop

Desktop

#design, #get

Mark Uraine 12:24 am on April 2, 2016
Tags: , ,   

Plugin Directory Design Direction

Earlier this week, a few of us met to discuss the design direction of 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. Directory. Myself, @michael-arestad, @hugobaeta, @melchoyce, @helen, and @samuelsidler looked at the current directory and challenged ourselves to look at it from a fresh perspective, exploring flows, UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing., and content. The overall goal was to set a direction for the design.

After a couple days of whiteboard drawings, we’re a lot closer and I wanted to share some explorations with you.

Please note that the below explorations are wireframes and heavily subject to change. They’re only meant to give you an idea of the direction we’re looking at.

We discussed three views:

  1. The landing page (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//plugins/)
  2. The Search results view
  3. The Single Plugin View

Plugin Landingpage

Plugins Landing page

Plugins Search Results

Plugins Search Results

Plugins Single View

Plugins Single View

Some pictures of our whiteboards

On each view, here are some thoughts on the direction.

Plugins Landing page (/plugins/)

  • The title blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. is much longer, with a more prominent search field at the top. Search is the primary action in the directory and we’re working to improve it.
  • The addition of a slider for featured plugins… yes that’s not misspelled, I wrote “slider”. 😉
  • Sectioned plugin blocks around various “filters” of plugins. As a sample, we used popular, trending, and 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., but these could be anything in the future.
  • The “Developer Center” that currently exists becomes a small “Plugin Authors” callout at the bottom of the page since it’s not frequently used. We’d add other blocks (like the ones show) where relevant.

Plugins Search Results

  • Search results maintain a similar style as the landing page.
  • Search field remains prominent in the title block.
  • In fact, when searching from the landing page, everything under the search box is replaced with results.

Plugins Single View

  • Maintain a large plugin banner at top of the view.
  • The plugin name will no longer be over the banner.
  • Below the banner, we show the name of the plugin, author, and a Download button.
  • The Translation Information displayed will note if a plugin is available in your language or, if not, allow you to click and see it on your localized site with a callout to begin a translation.
  • Tabs are removed. Instead, content blocks act as accordions on the page, revealing information when a visitor clicks to know more. The main column holds the following information:
    • Description
    • Changelog
    • Screenshots in the form of a gallery/slider (to be explored).
    • FAQs – We debated this section a bit, but FAQs are still quite important, when they exist. Ideally, these could be added in the plugin author dashboard instead of the readme so the format is more consistent. If that happened, we could show a list of questions with accordion-like answers when clicked.
    • Reviews – Becomes a section on this view where you can click to see more reviews.
    • “Contribute” is the new “Developers” section. Here we’d show relevant developer information, contributors, a donate button, and all available translations. As we experiment, this may become another view similar to Reviews where you click to see more detailed information.
  • Meanwhile, the sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. remains, but becomes more condensed. In it, we show:
    • Ratings – a break down by rating.
    • Support – a “widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user.” that shows relevant support information and allows the visitor to click to enter the support forumSupport Forum WordPress Support Forums is a place to go for help and conversations around using WordPress. Also the place to go to report issues that are caused by errors with the WordPress code and implementations..
    • Active Installs
    • Last Updated
    • CategoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging.
    • “Designed to work with” option, if relevant.

Overall, we worked hard to keep the most relevant information for visitors as information that’s important to plugin authors moves to the plugin admin dashboard.

Thoughts?

As a reminder these are wireframes to give you a general idea of the direction we’re heading.

What do you think about the direction? Are there things you think should be removed? Things that should be added to the main views? Leave your feedback in the comments.

#design, #plugin-directory, #plugins