Learning and Pulling Together
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Learning and Pulling Together

ByDan Knauss

This week was all about revisiting and continuing conversations that have special value and maybe for that reason tend to continue on with a life of their own. Tom Willmot dropped a fine Twitter thread about the challenge all enterprise WordPress agencies face. This came in response to Magne Ilsas‘ featured post here last week, The WordPress Enterprise Paradox. In a similar theme of industry peer cooperation, Eric Karkovack asks if WordPress product owners and developers can see a common interest in “voluntary standards.” Could this clean up the plugin market? James Farmer thinks the WordPress business community can do more for itself too — by sharing data. In Post Status Slack we’re learning the tricks and trials of ranking in the WordPress.org plugin repository. How about plugin telemetry? Learn from the voices of experience.

WordPress 6.1 RC5 • WP-CLI 2.7.1 • Help Test Plugin Dependencies Feature Plugin
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WordPress 6.1 RC5 • WP-CLI 2.7.1 • Help Test Plugin Dependencies Feature Plugin

ByCourtney Robertson

WordPress 6.1 rolls out on November 1. Help test 6.1 Release Candidate 3 — and the Rollback feature plugin. Be sure to look over the 6.1 DevNotes, Field Guides, and Team Updates.

A Visit from the Good Idea Fairy
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A Visit from the Good Idea Fairy

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

ByDan 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.

WordPress 6.1 RC2 • 6.1 Sneak Peek with Nick Diego • WP-CLI 2.7.1 • Help Test Plugin Dependencies Feature Plugin
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WordPress 6.1 RC2 • 6.1 Sneak Peek with Nick Diego • WP-CLI 2.7.1 • Help Test Plugin Dependencies Feature Plugin

ByCourtney Robertson

Get a sneak peek at WordPress 6.1 with Nick Diego. Help test 6.1 Release Candidate 2 — and the Plugin Dependencies feature plugin. Be sure to browse the 6.1 DevNotes, Field Guides, and Team Updates. WP-CLI 2.7.1 is available now.

Five takes on helpful plugin stats and insights
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Five takes on helpful plugin stats and insights

ByDan 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!

Does WordPress.org Data Belong to the WordPress Community? Should It?
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Does WordPress.org Data Belong to the WordPress Community? Should It?

ByDan Knauss

Today WP Watercooler sought Solutions to the Active Growth Problem. In a pointed but respectful conversation moderated but Sé Reed, the Watercooler crew got one new detail from Otto about the decision to remove the active install charts: it was made months ago. How should the data collected by WordPress.org be understood, as a basis…

Active Install Data Story Update: Not a breach but abuse of an endpoint
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Active Install Data Story Update: Not a breach but abuse of an endpoint

ByDan Knauss

John James Jacoby has been the main source of (unofficial) information about the removal of active install statistical tracking for plugins in the WordPress.org repository. On Friday, he provided more technical details on the WPwatercooler podcast.

Trust Issues
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Trust Issues

ByDan Knauss

Cory Miller asks, “What can we do to better support our plugin developers and product owners?” Katie Keith offers some clues with the story of her WordPress/WooCommerce agency and product shop, Barn2 Plugins. Dan Knauss and Nyasha Green talk about microaggressions, the Active Install Growth Data story, and US federal legislation aimed at Open Source Security. In an increasingly “demon-haunted world,” how can we know who is doing what with the hardware and software tools we use? Ben Gabler, CEO and Founder of Rocket.net, is in our Member Spotlight.

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What Can We All Do to Better Support Our Plugin Developers?

ByCory Miller

The recent discussions around the Active Installs data being removed from the WordPress Repo prompted a couple of questions I think we need to answer as a bigger WP community and particularly our members at Post Status. As someone who lived in the WordPress product space for 10+ years and had free and paid plugins…

Post Status Excerpt (No. 70) — Trust and Distrust: Microaggressions, Active Install Growth Data for Plugins, and Open Source Security
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Post Status Excerpt (No. 70) — Trust and Distrust: Microaggressions, Active Install Growth Data for Plugins, and Open Source Security

ByDan Knauss

In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, Dan and Ny take on three issues in the WordPress community that can threaten or impair trust while also revealing how foundational trust and healthy communication are: 1) racism and microaggressions, 2) the sudden removal and uncertain fate of the active install growth chart in the WordPress.org plugin repository, and 3) open source and security. Briefly discussed: emerging US federal policy that aims to secure open-source software. Zero-trust architecture might work well for networked machines, but human relationships and communities need trust.

Active Install Charts Removed from Plugin Repo
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Active Install Charts Removed from Plugin Repo

ByDan Knauss

In reaction to as-yet-unpublicized details about the abuse of active install data in the WordPress.org plugin repository, the charts displaying that data have been removed from plugin pages in a move expected to be temporary. Important (and some familiar) questions are emerging as this story unfolds: how to balance the values of openness, security, and privacy as well as cooperation and competition at WordPress.org — still the central hub for WordPress plugin businesses.

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