Last week XWP dropped an intriguing preview of a new project called Tide that aims to improve code quality across the WordPress plugin and theme ecosystems. The company has been working with the support of Google, Automattic, and WP Engine, on creating a new service that will help users make better plugin decisions and assist…
Last month the WordPress Plugin Directory relaunched with a new design and improvements to the search algorithm. The new design replaced the plugin pages’ previous tabbed interface with a wall of text, truncated by numerous “read more” links. The outpouring of negative community feedback on the new design overshadowed many of the helpful improvements. Removal…
WordPress.org relaunched the plugin directory this week with a new design and improvements to the search algorithm. The redesign spent more than six months in beta for feedback and testing, but many contributors on the project said they felt their feedback was not taken into account. The result is that the new design shipped but…
The new WordPress Plugin Directory went live today. Contributors have been working for the past year on rebuilding the directory with a new design and better capabilities for searching through the 45K+ available plugins. The new landing page displays a search bar prominently at the top, followed by sections for featured plugins, popular plugins, and…
Nearly 50K publicly available plugins call the WordPress plugin directory home but once in awhile a few of them seem to disappear. There is usually a good reason for why this happens but the only information available to the public is a page that says the plugin cannot be found. If the plugin is popular…
Two months ago, revised guidelines for the WordPress Plugin Directory were opened up on GitHub for public feedback. This transparent and open process of updating the guidelines resulted in more than a dozen contributors submitting pull requests with improvements to the language and content. The revamped guidelines have now replaced the previous ones with language…
Two months ago the WordPress Plugin Directory guidelines became a heated topic of debate after the plugin team began cracking down on incentivized reviews. The most recent publicized incident involved the Sprout Invoices plugin, which was temporarily removed from the directory and all of its 5-star reviews erased after it was discovered that the author…
Last week, Dan Cameron, creator of Sprout Invoices, received an email from the WordPress.org plugin review team stating that his plugin was in violation of the repository guidelines. Sprout Invoices was promptly removed from the directory and all of its 5-star reviews were also removed. Cameron had been discounting the professional license of his plugin…
WordCamp Europe 2016 had 500 attendees sign up for contributor day, which was held on Sunday at the University of Vienna. For the first time ever, the event hosted a plugin review workshop led by Mika Epstein where attendees learned about how the repository and review system works. Epstein announced a new #pluginreview channel on…
One of the main items on the agenda for the Theme Review Team this week was to finalize what type of upselling is allowed in themes hosted on WordPress.org. With the requirement of using the customizer for options, theme authors have gotten creative with upsells and will sometimes include panels and sections that are inoperable…
The official plugin directory is arguably the best place to host a plugin if you’re looking for the widest distribution, but it’s also one of the most inhospitable for developers. A current meta team initiative is focused on improving search, including prioritizing translated plugins for international users, and streamlining plugin submission, among other improvements. This…
Today the WordPress plugin review team issued a reminder for what they said is a long-standing, unwritten rule: frameworks are not allowed in the official directory. In a post tiled “Please do not submit frameworks,” Mika Epstein outlined the reason behind the rule: At this time, we are not accepting frameworks as we don’t feel…
In February 2015, the WordPress Theme Directory launched a new design. Konstantin Obenland worked with Samuel “Otto” Wood and the WordPress meta team to update the design and move the directory off of bbPress. Today Obenland announced that the Plugin Directory will be getting a similar treatment. Version 3 of the Plugin Directory will focus…
One of the small hurdles to hosting a plugin on WordPress.org is the fact that you have to use SVN to ship your updates. Most developers are far more familiar with Git. It’s not difficult to learn how to use SVN for the sake of WordPress.org plugins, but many find it to be inconvenient. Ship…
WordPress.org is making strides towards fully localizing the project’s official theme and plugin directories. Dion Hulse posted this morning that he has enabled localized theme directories for all Rosetta sites. For example, the Romanian themes directory is available at: ro.wordpress.org/themes/. Theme filters, directory sub-navigation, info and download buttons, and other aspects of the details page…