Reminder: WordPress 4.6 is imminent. Are your plugins ready? (also make sure your email is valid)

The email went out last night to everyone with commit access to 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.

After testing your plugins and ensuring compatibility, it only takes a few moments to change the readme “Tested up to:” value to 4.6. This information provides peace of mind to users and helps encourage them to update to the latest version.

For each plugin that is compatible, you don’t need to release a new version — just change the stable version’s readme value.

Looking to get more familiar with 4.6? Read this roundup post on the core development blog to check out the changes made to register_meta(), native fonts, persistent comment cache, Customizer APIs, WP_HTTP API, and much, much more: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2016/07/26/wordpress-4-6-field-guide/

Thank you for all you do for the WordPress community, and we hope you enjoy 4.6 as much as we do.

Also, as we’ve been warning for the last two cycles, some plugins have been closed. It’s a requirement that we be able to contact you. We’ve also been pushing back on auto-replies, since they make it impossible for us to tell if there’s a human reading. Frankly, based on the content of the auto-replies, this is the cycle we see:

We email you and receive an auto reply of “A support ticket has been created…” We email a warning “Hey, please remove us from this auto reply…” and we get another auto reply. We don’t reply to that one, but 3 months later when we send another email, the cycle starts anew. This tells us that you are not actually reading your support emails. Which means we have no way to contact you (and your users probably hate you, just FYI). So this time, plugins have been closed.

Your plugin has been closed (or you were removed from a plugin) based on the following criteria:

If you have auto-replied to our ‘Are your plugin ready?’ email 4+ times, and your plugin has not been updated in 2+ years
If your email bounced
If your auto-reply says “I’m on vacation until…” and it’s a invalid future date (example: someone’s out of office said they’d be back August 2014…)
If your auto-reply said you no longer work at a company
If your auto-reply says the company no longer exists

If the only valid emails for the plugin meet those criteria, the plugin was closed. If it was only one committer, they were removed and everyone else was emailed and notified.

In all cases we absolutely emailed each and every one of you. I did it myself. I directly contacted over 80 plugins about this situation and expressly told them if their plugins were closed or if people were removed, and why.

If you find your plugin was closed and you didn’t get an email, check spam, because they were all sent. Even to people who auto-replied. Which was really annoying.

#notice, #reminder, #updates

Drew Jaynes 7:09 pm on July 28, 2016

Thanks Mika!
Gregory Karpinsky (@tivnet) 9:57 pm on July 28, 2016

@Ipstenu Mika,

What exactly wrong with “A support ticket has been created…” ? If I am using a helpdesk for all my business correspondence, there will be an auto-reply.

Should we have a separate email for WP-org profile?

Thanks
- Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 10:15 pm on July 28, 2016
  
  You don’t need a separate email. Most people are clever and just add in a filterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. “Don’t auto reply to this email address…”
  
  If you’re unable to whitelist our email, then yes, make a new account for your development. Have that go to a shared email for all we care, but we just don’t want to read your auto replies.
  
  We need to be able to communicate directly with 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, and having automated responses don’t help us much. We *require* that we have the ability to contact you about updates on a regular basis. If we also get automated responses, then this eats up our time, and is a problem for us.
  
  We would prefer that you use an email address on the forums that goes to actual people, not into a support system. Our forums send emails for all sorts of reasons, and automated responses eat up our bandwidth needlessly, since they don’t go anywhere.
- Samuel Wood (Otto) 1:04 am on July 29, 2016
  
  I’m going to disagree with ipstenu on this one. Use a separate email. One that goes directly to you.
  
  If you want to get complicated about it and use the same email with rules and such, fine. But using your real email is so much simpler.
  
  The important thing is that when we email you about a problem with 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, it needs to go directly to your eyeballs, fast. However you do that is fine. But stop any and all auto replies to *@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/, plz… K thx. 🙂
  - Gregory Karpinsky (@tivnet) 12:39 pm on July 29, 2016
    
    I *am* using my direct email and will continue after this warning.
    
    BTW, HelpScout’s auto-reply does not have any rules, as far as I know. So, I am with @Otto.
    
    Thank you!
usability.idealist 12:27 am on July 30, 2016

is that the reason why the one of the most important / helpful plugins just disappeared completely from 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 Repo?

speaking of adminer, that is. Got an update info and a “last modification” of 2 days ago, but now its complete gone from the repo .. o.O

cu, w0lf.
- Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 2:34 am on July 31, 2016
  
  We do not now, nor likely ever will, disclose why specific plugins are withdrawn from the repository. Either we’d be ‘dog shaming’ them by publicizing bad behavior, or we’d be making YOU more vulnerable to a hack. Since it’s a lose lose situation, we don’t disclose to ANYONE outside of the developers themselves. If they want to tell folks, that’s on them.

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