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Opened 9 years ago

Closed 8 years ago

#35815 closed enhancement (wontfix)

Search for new plugins from the 'Installed Plugins' screen

Reported by: adamsilverstein's profile adamsilverstein Owned by: adamsilverstein's profile adamsilverstein
Milestone: Priority: normal
Severity: normal Version:
Component: Plugins Keywords: has-patch 2nd-opinion ux-feedback has-screenshots
Focuses: ui, administration Cc:

Description

When users click 'Plugins' in wp-admin, they are presented with a list of installed plugins and a search box labeled 'Search Installed Plugins'. How about changing that to 'Search for Plugins' and having it do the search on the 'Add New' screen (which returns installed plugins plus new plugins to install)?

I have a hunch users are confused by the existing search box, rarely use it, and really want to search for a new plugin to install. I have a patch worked up - this is a simple change - I'd love to see some user testing to validate the idea.

Attachments (2)

35815.diff (584 bytes) - added by adamsilverstein 9 years ago.
35815.png (638.5 KB) - added by ocean90 9 years ago.

Download all attachments as: .zip

Change History (14)

#1 @adamsilverstein
9 years ago

  • Keywords has-patch 2nd-opinion ux-feedback has-screenshots added
  • Owner set to adamsilverstein
  • Status changed from new to assigned

35815.diff

  • change button language to 'Search for Plugins'
  • target search form to plugin-install.php
  • add a hidden input tab=search to direct search to the correct 'tab'

Screenshots:

Search box before:

http://cl.ly/0G3C421o0208/Plugins__test__WordPress_2016-02-12_08-45-31.jpg

Search box after:

http://cl.ly/1O0Z0y191N1P/Plugins__test__WordPress_2016-02-12_08-47-23.jpg

Search results before, shows my single plugin matching 'rest':

http://cl.ly/1I1p1c0y2C0k/Plugins__test__WordPress_2016-02-12_08-46-23.jpg

Search results after, shows my plugin, marked as 'Installed' as well as 871 other matching items in the repository:

http://cl.ly/2v0s0d3f3B1P/Add_Plugins__test__WordPress_2016-02-12_08-50-26.jpg

#3 @kirasong
9 years ago

  • Focuses ui administration added

I'd missed the previous ticket, but I like this a lot.

I double-checked in Screen Options to find that 999 is the default number of items per page on this screen.

I'd be very surprised if there are a large percentage of sites that need more than that amount of plugins displayed on a single page. Due to this, for most installs, I would suspect this search box amounts to CTRL+F via PHP.

Short of use cases for this search box (please do give them, if I'm missing them), I like the idea of redirecting to more useful results, with the potential of expanding the experience at a later date.

It seems like, at the very least, it's worthwhile to run user tests on this.

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #design by rachelbaker. View the logs.


9 years ago

#5 @kirasong
9 years ago

@helen, do you have any opinions/insights on this, in particular given your experiences on #29865?

@ocean90
9 years ago

#6 @ocean90
9 years ago

I'm -1 on this change. It doesn't feel right to send the user to another screen which doesn't provide the same UI and functionality (like Edit/Delete/Deactivate).

I've attached a simple mockup on what I think could work on this screen: Show the first 3-6 search results from the plugin directory. The info on the cards should be reduced a bit, maybe just title, image, description and a link for more details.

#7 @pento
9 years ago

I'm okay with sending them to a new screen, but I'm not wild about removing the existing functionality.

Similar to Press This' Publish button, perhaps we could use a dropdown button to choose between "Search for Plugins" and "Search Installed Plugins" (with the former being the default).

#8 follow-up: @ericlewis
9 years ago

I agree with @ocean90 that there's too much of a context shift to drop the user directly into the plugin card UI.

Why do we have two plugin browsers? Are there thoughts about combining the two?

A simple fix in the short term could be to add a row in the search results of installed plugins that says "Want to search for plugins to install? Click here"

#9 in reply to: ↑ 8 @ericlewis
9 years ago

Replying to ericlewis:

A simple fix in the short term could be to add a row in the search results of installed plugins that says "Want to search for plugins to install? Click here"

Guess I missed that we already do this when there are no search results (r35808). But perhaps we could always show the link in search results?

#10 @helen
9 years ago

Do we have any sort of real information on who uses that search box and why? My sense is that it's mostly an unwanted action by users who don't really (yet) have a concept of plugins installed and plugins that can be installed, with some amount of significant regular usage for people who bulk manage/spin up sites. I'd be hesitant to mess with the latter group without knowing more about actual usage.

Generally, I think this only really works if there's a declared intent to blur the line between local and .org plugins. "Shiny Installs" looked in this direction I believe, with a button to "install and activate" a plugin. I'm not opinionated on this (yet).

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #feature-shinyupdates by paaljoachim. View the logs.


8 years ago

#12 @adamsilverstein
8 years ago

  • Milestone Awaiting Review deleted
  • Resolution set to wontfix
  • Status changed from assigned to closed

Closing this ticket as won't fix. Since opening this ticket the installed plugin screen has changed and the search box now supports an ajax search, as well as being more clearly labeled.

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