Active Install Growth

Learning and Pulling Together

Dan Knauss

November 11, 2022

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

Courtney Robertson

October 28, 2022

DesignHosting

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

Dan Knauss

October 21, 2022

BusinessPlanet

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

Dan Knauss

October 21, 2022

BusinessDesign

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

Courtney Robertson

October 20, 2022

DesignHosting

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

Dan Knauss

October 20, 2022

BusinessFeatures

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?

Dan Knauss

October 14, 2022

BusinessNotes

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…

Two Key Questions We Need To Answer

Cory Miller

October 14, 2022

PlanetPost Status Team Blog

What are the best things the WordPress community can do to better support plugin developers and founders? Recent discussions around the Active Install data being removed from WordPress.org forces us to respond to this question if we believe a healthy third-party plugin market is essential to WordPress, as I do.

WordPress 6.1 RC1 • DevNotes • Field Guides • New LearnWP Course

Courtney Robertson

October 12, 2022

DesignHosting

WordPress 6.1 RC 1 has shipped with a release date of November 1. It's time to start testing! Check out the Developer Notes, Field Guide, and related team updates.

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

Dan Knauss

October 8, 2022

NotesSecurity

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.

How Open Source is WordPress?

Michelle Frechette

October 7, 2022

PlanetThe Week in Review

Decision-by-committee is difficult enough, and decision-by-community is called an election. Surely there must be a way that we can gather information, keep the community informed, and move forward in a mutually-beneficial way.

Trust Issues

Dan Knauss

October 7, 2022

BusinessPlanet

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.

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

Cory Miller

October 7, 2022

PlanetPost Status Team Blog

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…

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

Dan Knauss

October 7, 2022

BusinessDesign

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.

WordPress 6.1 Beta 3 • Active Install Growth Chart

Courtney Robertson

October 6, 2022

DesignHosting

Help test WordPess 6.1 Beta 3! 🧪 Check out the latest features that are coming in the 6.1 release. 📦 Follow updates about bringing back the Active Install Growth chart. 📈

Active Install Charts Removed from Plugin Repo

Dan Knauss

October 3, 2022

BusinessFeatures

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.