Policy Reminder: Tracking Users

Do not, under any circumstances, track usage of your 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 without explicit consent.

If you want to ask your users if you can track them, by all means ask. But you may not require it, and you shouldn’t make it look like they have to in order to use your plugin. That’s being dishonest.

This has been a guideline for a very long time, it’s not negotiable. Assume people do not want to be tracked and have it to be an opt-in feature.

If your plugin uses Google Analytics, emails you on plugin activation, triggers some complex check on your servers when a plugin is updated, or tracks usage in any other way when a user has not clearly said “Yes, I allow you to track me,” your plugin will be removed from the repository and you will have to correct this in order to get it back.

This extends to ads provided by a third party service. If your plugin includes advertising from a third party service, then it has to default to completely disabled. This is to prevent tracking information from being collected from the user without their consent. Again, this is all about people opting into being tracked.

(For those thinking about using Adsense, don’t. Re-read their Adsense Display Guidelines and note that they do not want you to put ads on non-content pages … which is what the whole WP Dashboard is.)

Don’t assume that just because someone said they agreed to have usage tracked by you that they’re okay with usage tracked by someone else. Don’t be shady or vague. Tell people upfront “This is who will get the following data…”

Remember, user trust is paramount to your plugin’s success. If people find out you’re sneaky tracking them, you will lose that trust in a heartbeat and there’s nothing anyone can do to help you restore it.

#guidelines, #reminder

buzztone 10:49 pm on May 12, 2016

RE: “you shouldn’t make it look like they have to in order to use your 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”

I’ve recently noticed some plugins in the repository that do this. What’s the best way to report of this?
- Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 1:18 am on May 13, 2016
  
  First be a good person and point it out to them directly 🙂 “Hey, I like your 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, but you’re making it look like people have to do X… Did you know that was against the rules?”
  
  Sometimes people simply don’t know. They should, but I can’t make people RTFMRTFM "Read the 'fine' material" is a admonishment to read the email/documentation before complaining it doesn't exist or that you weren't told what to do. 🙂 Link them back here and give them a chance to be good people. If they don’t, then report it to us as a guideline violation (plugins AT 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/) and we’ll be a little firmer.
David Anderson 10:07 am on May 13, 2016

Hi Mika,

Thanks for the continual drip-feed of articles reminding 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 authors of best practices. Can I make a suggestion for a future one? One problem that eats up enormous amounts of man hours (for both site owners and plugin developers) is plugin conflicts. Lots could easily be avoided by simply enqueueing your scripts/stylesheets only on relevant pages.

e.g. In wp-admin, first check it’s your page before your enqueue. That way, all issues of incompatible scripts/CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. would just disappear for a lot of cases.
Similarly for loading PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. SDKs – only register your auto-loader, or whatever, for an SDK when it’s time to use it, instead of globally every time WP loads (which is also bad for performance).

If more plugin authors were aware of some of these best practices, and spent a few minutes implementing them, it’d save huge amounts of time for people finding problems on their sites, investigating, forum-posting, etc.

David

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