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This is everything we publish that’s fit for a WordPress-focused RSS feed.

Post Status Excerpt (No. 72) — Can We Get to “Yes” on Better UX?

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Dan Knauss
This week in an article shared in Post Status Slack, Eric Karkovack suggested some ways to improve the WordPress user experience, especially for DIY users setting up a website for the first time. Some of the things Eric wants to see happen, like a standard interface for plugins and a curated view of the plugin ecosystem, are also commonly expressed by designers, developers, and people in other roles at WordPress agencies serving enterprise clients. Can we get everyone to "yes" on a better UX?

A Visit from the Good Idea Fairy

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Dan Knauss
Building, Supporting, and Selling a Winning Product — With or Without WordPress.org • Are Active Install Counts Relevant to Your Business's Success? (Even if they are accurate? And they haven't been.) • Let's Fix What's Broken (The Plugin Repo) Not What Isn't (The Freemium Model) • Follow Leaders, Adopt Standards • Tools and expertise from rtCamp • Some great and "doable" ideas for the future of plugin business metrics on the .org repo. Could some of them help put an end to intrusive and manipulative dark patterns in the WordPress Admin dashboard and notifications?

Post Status Excerpt (No. 71) — Building, Supporting, and Selling a Winning Product — With or Without WordPress.org

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Dan Knauss
This week I sat down again with Eric Karkovack to talk about the WordPress stories and topics that are on the top of our minds. Independently, we made nearly the same selections. There's a single throughline in this episode — what works, what doesn't, and what will take WordPress businesses forward in the product, agency, and hosting spaces.

Five takes on helpful plugin stats and insights

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Dan Knauss
Good ideas for the future of data disclosed to plugin authors using the wordpress.org repository:

1) Identify surges of unhappy users reacting to a bad release — and the opposite, happier outcome.

2) Use pageview analytics to estimate total potential user interest and conversion rates.

3) Assess a plugin's performance with the .org search algorithm, the quality of releases, and plugin incompatibility as well as PHP compatibility issues.

4) Collect significant user behavior data anonymously without phoning home.

5) Just reveal all the raw data with privacy options for individual authors — no interpretive analysis on wordpress.org.

BONUS: Let's take this discussion somewhere else!

The New WooCommerce Agency Partner Program

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Dan Knauss
Here's everything you should know about the WooCommerce Agency Partner Program with their program manager, Mary Voelker. Key takeaways: The WooExpert program started in 2015, and participants had to be invited and pay for a membership in it. Agency partners…

Over, Under, Around, and Through

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Dan Knauss
This week Alex Denning (Ellipsis) draws on Iain Poulson's historical, high-level plugin data at WP Trends to offer some thoughtful, somewhat contrary, but practical and grounded perspectives on the value of Active Install Data. At the WP Watercooler and elsewhere, a realization seems to be setting in that the data is not open source and not the property of the WordPress community. Like last week's episode of Post Status Draft with Katie Keith of Barn2 Plugins, Till Krüss (Object Cache Pro, Relay) offers a lot of lessons this week about less travelled paths to success in the plugin business even as a very small company or company of one. Performance, testing, and support are key, interrelated parts of Till's success and probably the most important ones to borrow in your own life and work if they resonate.
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