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Sarah Gooding

Shiny Updates Project Officially Proposed for Merge Into WordPress 4.6

shiny-updates

This week the Shiny Updates Team officially proposed the merge of the plugin into the upcoming WordPress 4.6 release. The project modernizes the process of installing, updating, and deleting themes and plugins in order to hide what is colloquially referred to as “The Bleak Screen of Sadness.” This is the screen that shows the technical rundown of what WordPress is doing behind the scenes as it performs installations and updates.

Shiny Updates improves the workflow so that it hides all the mundane details and doesn’t require a page refresh. The plugin also shines up the process of updating core translations. Pascal Birchler posted a screencast in the proposal, demonstrating the improvements that users can expect if Shiny Updates are approved for merge:

The proposed update expands on the shiny plugin updates that were introduced in WordPress 4.2 and extends the improvements to themes, translations, core, and the installation/deleting workflow for extensions.

Shiny Updates is currently active on more than 1,000 installations and has been refined by multiple rounds of user testing. The project’s team plans to tackle any remaining bugs on GitHub this week and will prepare a core patch by next Wednesday’s scheduled development chat.

Responses to the proposal have been consistently positive, as the improvements make updating WordPress easier and less of a chore. Although this may seem like a small improvement, refinements like these have a major impact on WordPress users. Fewer clicks in the admin translate into less time spent on site management, making it easier to stay ahead of security issues and keep the software up to date.

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9 responses to “Shiny Updates Project Officially Proposed for Merge Into WordPress 4.6”

  2. Does someone remember installing Windows 95. Please insert disc 2/10… Please insert disc 3/10? Somehow this is what the plugin updater reminds me of – now, since I think about it. I am very happy about Shiny Updates. My mother used to ask me, if I can install Windows 95 for her, because it just looked difficult. Now, there is no problem no more.

    Yes, if my mother would use WordPress, she would have constantly asked me to update her plugins, just because it looked a bit dangerous to click this update and what happens there. Something is downloading, now extracting, now installing (or whatever), am I missing something, do I do something wrong. Now my mother would just click update. A huge thanks to the Shiny Updates team and – yes – to my mother!

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  6. I left this comment on Pascal’s post on make.wordpress.org:

    “This is such a great idea.

    Pascal, I wonder if it would be possible to integrate within the Shiny Updates, a “one click” solution so users can rate their installed plugins.

    I mean, some two to three days after the user had installed the plugin, your interface would show the five star button that’s available on the plugin repository in wordpreess.org, so users would only have to click in there, and the plugin rating would be updated in the repository immediately.
    (Eventually, a text field would open next, so the user could writesome words regarding his/her opinion telling why had chosen to rate the plugin the way it rated on the stars button.)

    You see, when someone needs to go to wordpress.org searching for plugins, it is so strange to see that most of plugins have thousands of installs but the vast majority only get few tens (well, some get few hundreds, but that is really rare) of ratings.

    That is just not good. Something is not working well on the plugin rating scheme nowadays.

    Your solution would be the best thing that plugin rating could get to increase a bit more the precious information that one needs to get when a search for a new plugin is on our way on the repository.

    Thank you so very much for all your precious work.”

    – – –

    Although, it seems that his project is not directed to this approach, Pascal liked the idea! He said:

    “Thanks for your feedback!

    Shiny Updates are unrelated to plugin ratings, but I like the idea. This needs some work on the w.org side of things though, as it can only be implemented when users can connect their blog to WordPress.org. That way users could easily rate plugins and themes and mark plugins as favorites as well. Definitely worth pursuing.”

    – – –

    I guess I will make a bit more “noise” with this idea of mine on other places where it could turn into a feature on WordPress core, who knows?

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  7. I don’t know if one button to “update all things” is a good idea. Batch update may not be a big concern for a small site, but for large web site, it anything goes wrong, “update all things” could become “destroy all things”. When this happens, who will get blamed? WP or the administrator?

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    • I suppose that for such integration to take place, the WordPress team might have already considered all those questions, so no one would then get a WordPress release so buggy that could destroy a project just for trying to update ‘all’ the plugins.

      Still, your concern must not be silenced, as this should be everyone’s concern. (it is mine too!)

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