Make WordPress Core

Opened 7 years ago

Last modified 6 years ago

#43115 new feature request

Improve plugin search results

Reported by: prodefu's profile prodefu Owned by:
Milestone: Awaiting Review Priority: normal
Severity: normal Version: 4.9.2
Component: Plugins Keywords:
Focuses: Cc:

Description

Hi there,

I'm not sure if I post this at the right place, but being new to 'get involved' I find this to be the most direct place to share my thoughts. Maybe someone before me has suggested my request before, but I could not find existing tickets about it.

For a long time I do miss a good filtering and sorting option in the plugin repository, both on wordpress.org/plugins and in the admin plugin section. I would like to see a filter and sorting option for the following attributes:

  • WP version compatiblility (tested up to ...)
  • WP version required
  • number of active installs -> if this is high, it must be a quite good plugin, otherwise not so many websites would use it
  • in plugin repository since -> plugin can be fairly new and therefore not yet have a high number of active installs
  • last updated -> to filter out plugins that are not regularly updated
  • rating

I also would like to see that 'last updated' would be added to the info for a single plugin search result (where now only the number of active installs, developer and 'tested with' is displayed), so you can see right away if a plugin is well maintained or not.

I would also suggest that plugins which have not been updated or maintained at all for over a year will be marked; for example with a traffic light: orange for 'updated more than a year ago', red for 'updated more than two years ago' (and off course green for 'updated less than a year ago').

I think the least plugin writers can do is test their plugin for compatibility with each new WP version and update this information if the plugin still works fine. Maybe make this mandatory if you want your plugin to be included in the plugin reporitory?

I hope this will also encourage all plugin writers to maintain their plugins better. My goal is to separate the plugins of good quality and high developer dedication from the plugins that are less well maintained. And make this visible to users.

I'm looking forward to a response from the core developers community. Thanks!

Attachments (1)

Sketch.jpg (685.0 KB) - added by JoshuaWold 6 years ago.

Download all attachments as: .zip

Change History (2)

#1 @JoshuaWold
6 years ago

Howdy! Thanks so much for sharing. Really great thoughts and glad you're looking at ways to improve the usability of finding plugins. Welcome :)

Adding options to filter search results could be useful. We just want to make sure that any features we're adding improve the user experience and don't complicate things. My concern right now is that most of the filtering options you suggested, while quite useful to folks who know WordPress, could make the interface feel complicated to folks who just want to find a good plugin.

I did a quick search for Contact Form and found 296 pages. That's pretty overwhelming. The question though is, am I more likely to start filtering results if they're available, or would I just pick the first couple results and open their pages?

This would be a perfect candidate for some simple user testing!

With that said, if we included filtering it might make sense to hide it as an advanced search option. See my suggested sketch below.

Look forward to continued discussion on this!

@JoshuaWold
6 years ago

Note: See TracTickets for help on using tickets.