Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 8:46 pm on June 14, 2017  

Search Issues

UPDATE (@dd32): All issues should be resolved as of 2:15AM UTC. The root cause was a change in the behaviour of Jetpack Search which we rely upon causing queries to fail. A network outage had caused issues for some queries earlier in the day, but was completely unrelated.

You may have noticed that search is acting up. Per @dd32:

w.org is experiencing a few network issues at present in the datacenter, it’s likely that connectivity between the API and wp.com’s elastic search is up-and-down, and when it’s down, search will be offline.

Yes, that means search for plugins too.

There’s nothing to do but wait at this point. It may be up and down while the connectivity is being sorted.

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 5:23 pm on May 30, 2017  

X-posting Proposal: WordPress Community Conduct Project

Please read + comment on the original post.

Proposal: WordPress Community Conduct Project

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 6:02 pm on May 23, 2017
Tags: meta   

New Directory Status

As everyone knows, the first phase of opening up the directory to more reviewers was getting on the new system. We’re not quite there yet, however a great deal of progress has been made!

So far, we’ve run into a few weird flow issues that are blocking us from being able to invite new people. The biggest issue is that if you know the old system, it’s easy to move tickets through the new one. But it’s set up in a way that is very very easy to make mistakes and put tickets in unrecoverable states. So we need to mitigate that as much as possible before we let new people in. Basically we don’t want to break things for users because we didn’t think about use-cases.

Okay, fine, you say. What can you do to help?

I’m glad you asked!

We have 100 tickets open in Meta Trac. You can install the meta-environment in VVV and help us out with patches. Sadly, the meta env isn’t complete. It’s missing data, so you’ll end up having to add in plugins in order to mess with the state flow.

But if you can’t patch, and I do understand that, remember to come to the Plugin Directory revamp meetings on Wednesday at 2200 UTC in #meta on Slack. And please, test test test everything! The more we break the directory, the better it is 🙂

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 9:59 pm on May 16, 2017
Tags:   

SVN Status: Seems to be Okay

I know Dion mentioned it in a comment, but here’s the official… We think it’s okay now post (I delayed to be more sure).

The SVN sync stuff SEEMS to be okay. The main issues appear to be sorted out, so 🤞🏾

We’re keeping a close eye on it, but please do remember to be nice to our poor system 🙂

#announcement

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 5:02 pm on May 14, 2017  

SVN Syncing Issues Continued

tl;dr – Yes we know, yes we’re working on it, no you don’t need to email.

I’m really sorry about this issue, but right now literally all I know is that the tool we use to automagically schedule everything that happens after you use SVN to bump your plugins is acting like a truculent child. It’s slow, it’s dragging it’s feet, and it’s taking WAY more than six hours (which is usually the outside norm for this stuff) to finish, if it does at all. It took 36 hours for one plugin, and even then some people got weird results.

And no, we don’t really know why yet.

It’s possible this is related to the new directory. It’s possible it’s from the entire .org slowdown last week or maybe it’s because we released the Beta and everything is slow from that. We literally don’t know.

I apologize for a series of very curt emails, but with the volume of people complaining, we had to resort to an auto-reply of, basically, we know, please be patient. If I have anything else to tell you, I will post, but right now we don’t know why and we can’t magically tell you what we don’t know, so please be patient with us.

Also no, there’s not a ticket because this is actually outside the meta repository. That means it’s not open source, the part that’s busted. The people with the access are aware and yes, I’ve pushed to escalate this. But it’s the weekend and it’s Mothers’ Day in the US, so you’re just going to have to be a little extra patient.

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 6:03 pm on May 11, 2017
Tags:   

Repository Syncing Issues (Updated)

Update from Otto: “The brunt of the plugin-delay problem has been solved now, so plugins should be nice and speedy again. There may be a few stragglers that got rescheduled for later due to the overload, they will clear themselves up in the next couple hours.”

Due to a network issue in the wee hours of May 11, updates to SVN are taking longer than normal to show up on the directory. The issue created a 2 hour backlog, which normally would work itself out pretty quickly. It’s currently being exacerbated by everyone who sees their code NOT showing up right away and pushing it again.

As Otto says:

In short, when it’s being slow, then it’s being slow and nothing you can do will speed it up, so just relax, go outside, walk around, and wait for it.

Do we want to make the process faster? Of course. And if you’re interested in helping that, please check out Meta ticket #1578 to understand how it was all written for the new directory.

To remind you:

  • Changes can take a couple hours to display even on the good days. While it is generally much shorter, 6-12 hours is about when you should start wondering if something’s up, not before.
  • Multiple commits to SVN means multiple builds of your code. The more times you commit, the more builds, and the slower it goes for everyone. Commit once, then go make a sandwich.
  • Zips are built for for every tag’d release in your repository. Fewer tags, faster builds. We advocate removing older builds as they’re generally not necessary for use.
  • Patience, patience, patience. With over 60k plugins (counting the closed ones), this is a HUGE database of things.

#announcement

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 4:01 pm on May 8, 2017
Tags: downtime, server load   

Server Load Woes

If you got an error like this when using SVN today, it’s not just you:

Committing transaction...:   Error: Commit failed (details follow):  Error: Error running context: The server unexpectedly closed the connection.  Completed!:

Or

Committing transaction...:   Error: Commit failed (details follow):  Error: Failed to start '/home/svn/repos/wp-plugins/hooks/pre-commit' hook  

There was a high server load on WordPress.org on Monday May 8th, which caused the system to have those errors. When it happens to you, just go make a coffee or bake a pie and come back in a bit.

#downtime, #server-load

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 6:25 pm on May 4, 2017
Tags:   

2016 in Review

It’s May. I forgot to post this. Go on and laugh 🙂

Anyway. At the end of last year, I looked at all the posts on Make/Updates and manually crafted out a spreadsheet that listed all the plugins submissions, rejections, approvals and closures. And here’s how the year looked:

image

If you don’t want to calculate it all yourself, I’ve made my Google sheet sharable. I didn’t go back and do 2015, and while I do plan to do one for 2017, we will have a big gap in numbers as I don’t have a way to calculate closed plugins at the moment.

By the way, there was a higher number of closed plugins in 2016 than ever before. That’s because more people than ever have asked us to close plugins, but also because we closed plugins without a committer with a valid email address. And that was a lot of people.

#announcement

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 6:21 am on April 26, 2017  

Reminder: Google Hates Widget Links

In a blog post last year, Google reminded users that widgets are cool, but widget links are the suxxor.

Widgets can help website owners enrich the experience of their site and engage users. However, some widgets add links to a site that a webmaster did not editorially place and contain anchor text that the webmaster does not control. Because these links are not naturally placed, they’re considered a violation of Google Webmaster Guidelines.

If you look at the examples, they highlight things that many plugin (and theme) developers would consider acceptable links.

What does this mean for you? It means your powered-by link may adversely impact your users. Be smart. Make your links no-follow.

Also as a reminder: Any and all powered-by links and credits must be opt-in. That is a site owner must make the conscious and informed decision to display your credits. You cannot have them show by default, you cannot have them be opt-out, and you cannot hide them in display:none code or any other way that embeds a clickable link. Code comments like <!-- Powered by WordPress --> is fine.

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 5:30 pm on April 16, 2017
Tags:   

Submitted a Plugin? Please Check Your Emails!

Currently ~30% of all new plugins are approved within 7 days of submission.

Why so low? People don’t reply to their emails. We have over 100 plugins waiting on replies from developers. At this precise moment (10:30 am US Pacific Time, Sunday April 16) there are ZERO plugins pending review. That means everyone who submitted a plugin between April 1 and today has been emailed.

If you didn’t get the email, please go check your spam. Free email clients like Hotmail, Yahoo, and Google tend to file us as ‘automated’ emails, which is not true, but whatever. Put plugins@wordpress.org in your whitelist (actually put @wordpress.org in a filter to have it never treated as spam and always important) because if you’re not getting emails from WP and you’ve submitted a plugin or a theme, you’re going to have a bad time.

Again. Everyone’s been emailed. I promise. Check your emails. Drop us a line if you can’t find it. Remember to whitelist us.

#reminder