Tellyworth 3:00 pm on March 30, 2017
Tags: meta ( 33 )

Announcing the new WordPress Plugin Directory

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 is very happy to announce the launch of the all-new WordPress 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!

First announced as an 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. at WordCamp Europe 2016 , this latest evolution features a range of improvements, both internal and tangible:

A new back-end based on WordPress, to replace the old bbPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org. engine.
Refactored 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. code, also 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..
A complete visual redesign and open-source theme.
A completely open-source codebase.
A vastly improved search engine.

Developers and testers running early versions of WordPress 4.8 have already been using the new API for a while now, and many in the #meta community have been testing and contributing to the new directory’s development.

For those of you seeing the new directory for the first time, here are some of its features in detail that will interest both plugin developers and users:

The search engine has been totally replaced. Searches now return the most relevant results based on a combination of many factors including version compatibility, recency, and popularity, in conjunction with text relevancy. This means that obsolete and unsupported plugins – while still available – are less prominent in search results than those in active development and use.

Search results in the old directory, left, and the new directory, right.

The most important information about each plugin is shown up front, rather than on separate tabs. The description, screenshots, and FAQs are all visible together, with a simple scroll, without flipping to a separate tab. Important metadata like versions and ratings are shown in a 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., much like before, but we’ve simplified the page with a 2-column layout, removing extraneous navigation from the old 3rd column.

Plugin details in the old directory, left, and the new page, right.

We have also revised 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) across the new design, with improved text sizes and contrast, and better markup for screen readers. The new design is responsive and works well on mobile and desktop devices with a wide range of sizes.

Behind the scenes, the entire back end of the web site and API has been replaced with an open source WordPress plugin. The old directory was built on bbPress with a collection of ageing, closed-source plugins. It was antiquated and difficult to maintain. The new directory uses the best practices of modern WordPress development; and, since it’s entirely open source, can be maintained and improved by a much wider community.

It’s been a long road, so it’s very exciting to finally launch the new Plugin Directory. Thanks to everyone who has contributed their time and energy to the project, especially @obenland, @mapk, @dd32, and @gibrown, whose enthusiastic efforts made everything look easy.

The new directory has been built with future maintainability and iterative enhancement in mind. We’re looking forward to hearing feedback from the whole WordPress community, and making regular improvements and additions. Bug reports and specific enhancement requests can be made in Trac. The best place for questions and general discussion is the #meta channel 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/..

Anonymous User 5:43 pm on March 30, 2017

I love the direction this is heading in! Overall, I think it is a vast improvement.

The big issue for me is the “read more” button. I think this needs to be much more clear. turning it into a button or even just increasing the text size would help.

I think adding the latest reviews to the main page is also a good idea. However, it would be good to be able to see the date of those review. Seeing lots of 5 star ratings gives the impression that 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 is working well “right now”, even if it was over a year ago and the plugin is no longer maintained actively.

Other than that, I’m really excited to see how this develops over time. Great work guys!
- Luke Cavanagh 8:28 pm on March 30, 2017
  
  https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/2633
Rami Yushuvaev 8:30 pm on March 30, 2017

You should also mention that the “Install” tab was finally removed. 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 developers can remove the installation section from their readme file.
- Luke Cavanagh 8:42 pm on March 30, 2017
  
  If you have comment to add about that, please leave them on this 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. ticket, thanks. https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/2645
  - Samuel Sidler 9:28 pm on March 30, 2017
    
    @lukecavanagh: That ticket is unrelated to Rami’s comment.
    
    @ramiy: make/plugins should do a wrap up post at some point and we’ll make sure to include that detail in it.
    - Luke Cavanagh 10:23 pm on March 30, 2017
      
      That 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. ticket is about Installation instructions which was what Rami mentioned about with the “install” tab.
- Rami Yushuvaev 9:19 pm on March 30, 2017
  
  One more issue, when oEmbeding 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 URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org, the output has no icon/banner.
  - Samuel Wood (Otto) 11:22 pm on March 30, 2017
    
    Embeds were sort of a bad hack in the old directory. But the new directory has an 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. theme, so embeds can be added to it or modified in it, so I highly recommend making a 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. ticket about any improvements you want to suggest.
smartcat 1:25 pm on March 31, 2017

The new appearance looks great !
I noticed the search change right away, and there are some issues i’ve picked up on. When searching keywords, there are plugins that are often showing up in the search results even though they don’t relate to the search term ( Yoast, Ultimate member and other very popular plugins ).
Also with a popularity-based search, one question that comes to mind is: how does this affect new plugins ? It would seem like new plugins would have a very hard time getting seen based on this.
One suggestion I have is: what if the search results are sorted by 2 categories: Popular & New.
Gary Bairead 3:24 pm on March 31, 2017

Thanks to everyone involved for the all the hard work they’ve put into this.

We’re looking forward to hearing feedback from the whole WordPress community.

Are there specific goals that the 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. changes are aiming to achieve?

I don’t mean “making things more simple”, I mean goals that could possibly be measured to determine the success of the changes – the number of clicks it takes before a user downloads or installs 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, increases in the number of users leaving reviews, increase/decrease in page views etc.
danstramer 6:09 pm on March 31, 2017

I might be joining late to the party, but as a developer / users / designer, using wordpress for the last 8 years I feel that the new layout is not very intuitive for use and navigation. I would suggest adding a nav menu on the top of the page which serves as navigation (of course) but also as a page index, displaying to the user what are his options. See attached screenshot suggestion.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/c0ygvra4ds4lzvm/plugin-page.jpg?dl=0

I also feel that the stats info is missing and have you decided on removing the previous “Installation” tab? Should it be incorporated inside the “Description” section? Wasn’t it used by users?
Thanks,
Dan
bgermann 3:22 pm on April 1, 2017

IIs there still a size limit to the readme.txt file (it was around 30 KiB)? I had to cut my changelog to not cause issues with the old Directory version.
- Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 9:24 pm on April 4, 2017
  
  You should still keep your readme smaller 🙂 Think of it this way: People don’t read. Keep the readme to the point, informative, and either link to the changelog or leave it to the last two major releases.
bgermann 3:26 pm on April 1, 2017

In the old Developers section you were able to download ZIP files of the old versions. The URLs are still available, so why not include the links in the changelog’s = version lines =? I think users who want to install old versions (e.g. to follow an update path) should be able to do this without using 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/..
- bgermann 3:55 pm on April 1, 2017
  
  Just saw https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/2365
Jenny 7:52 pm on April 2, 2017

Congrats and massive thanks to everyone who helped shape and worked on this <3
Alvaro Gois dos Santos 9:17 am on April 5, 2017

I was wondering if there’s some kind of documentation on how Featured plugins get, you know… featured?
jdaniel 10:01 am on April 6, 2017

Hello,

I just realized that 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 is broken”/”plugin works” feature is missing. This is a huge step backwards for me, since I rely on this feature a lot.

I know that not many people used it, especially for most minor plugins the results weren’t very meaningful. However for huge plugins like WooCommerce and W3 Total Cache it preserved me from updating to a new version with critical errors. I know about backups and dev testings, which are both very important, but this user feedback was also very useful for me.

The latest version of W3 Total Cache for example had around 20 people saying “not working” and only 1-2 saying “working”. Now people don’t have this kind of “warning” and many might update, experience the same bugs. This could be avoided with the simple, yet important feature.

So I kindly suggest to reconsider integrating it again. I say this as a user, not a developer.

Thanks
Daniel
Maciej Swoboda - WP Desk 2:13 pm on April 7, 2017

After the update 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 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. images are all blurred, because the size changed.

There is no information about how to handle it: https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-org/plugin-assets/#the-new-directory

Can you please tell us, developers, how to solve this issue?

Should we just upload new image sizes (940x304px) with old file names (banner-772×250.png)?

Directory

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

Announcing the new WordPress Plugin Directory

Directory

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

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