Learning and Pulling Together
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Learning and Pulling Together

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 β€” 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.

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

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?

Why the WordPress.org growth charts might not matter
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Why the WordPress.org growth charts might not matter

In 2019-20, only four plugins entered the space and broke into the upper tiers. These were Site Kit for Google, Facebook for WooCommerce, Creative Mail for WordPress and WooCommerce, and Google Ads and Marketing by Kliken. Has the WordPress.org repository become a closed shop, a tapped-out ecosystem where the winners have taken all? Here are some suggestions about how to break in or changes that could be proposed to open and diversify the repository. Until that happens, do growth charts matter?

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

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…

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Plugin Checker

On July 5, Felix Arntz proposed creating and adopting a plugin checking tool for the Plugin Review Team similar to the theme checker. The Performance Team would take the lead, but contributors from other teams would be needed as well. Previously, in June, Felix created a proof-of-concept on Github. Looking forward to seeing this in…

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Footnotes #456

Issue #456 β€œOne of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn’t as individuals.” β€” Jean Vanier, Community And Growth Howdy! Thinking about WordPress history lately in terms of business and product acquisitions, key investments and hires … it says A LOT about…

Crate wants to help you escape license key hell

Crate turns your WordPress site into a plugin repository to improve release management between environments and automate Composer support for commercial plugins. That’s the promise of Brady Vercher’s idea that he’s calling Crate. This is something that I would really, really like. I also told Brady I think it sounds like a terrible business idea….

Aesop, a Medium-esque “story engine” for WordPress
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Aesop, a Medium-esque “story engine” for WordPress

Aesop is a self-described “story engine” for WordPress. The plugin boasts “components designed for rich storytelling experiences.” Basically, it creates an admin interface that allows a site owner to create interactive stories, similar to those popularized by projects like Medium 1.0Β and a number of big news agencies like The Washington Post and The New York…

All plugins are (not) created equal
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All plugins are (not) created equal

Plugins are the new black in WordPress site development, and picking out the perfect plugins for your site can quickly become overwhelming. The WordPress.org plugin repository hosts over 26,000 plugins and the plugin forum contains over 1.3 million posts. Check out this plugin wordcloud – what stands out amongst the rest?Β  With so many plugins…

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