Need an idea

[mfields]

1. When looking at a plugin, make the forum topics about it not hidden in the bottom right corner. Perhaps spread them across the bottom, or have their own tab or something.

I'm all for this idea. I think that a tab of their own makes a lot of sense.

The ability to post screencasts from http://screenr.com/ would be amazing. Whenever I upload a screencast to youtube, it gets compressed in a really ugly fashion that just about renders it visually incomprehensible. The quality on Screenr is amazing. I would love to be able to post these instead of the muck that youtube makes.

Better Trac support. I would like to be able to submit patches for my plugins and hopefully have other do the same. It is quite possible that I don't know how this works, but I cannot access Trac for any of my plugins. I think that it would be a great idea to utilize Trac for all plugins and have a direct link so that users can submit bugs. This is currently handled by the support forums. IMO it would be best to use the forums for support (e.g. "How do I do this") and Trac for bugs and feature requests (e.g. This is broken and here's how you fix it).

Just a few thoughts....

[Rich Pedley]

Although not really extend/plugins related, but a possibility to mark support topics "solved" or "invalid" would be nice. Nothing's worse for a plugin author than a topic titled "Plugin is broken" or "This plugin crashes your site!!!1" on the plugin page that is 2 years old or so.

Or probably just limit the listed topics to a certain time range, e.g. showing topics from the last 2 months only. Most topics older than that would most likely be outdated (?).

We already can, but only if they post from the right place. But adding the ability for us to also lock/close threads might be an option.

The ability to list latest posts against multiple tags would help a lot for any plugin author that has more than one plugin, this would be a top priority for me.

The ability to list downloads per version would be useful.

If you're also working on the works/doesn't work section... then making people give reasons for why it doesn't work would help out a lot of us (perhaps limiting the reply to more than x characters as well - otherwise a lot of them will just be blank).

Listing all plugins by x author isn't as useful for the author as it would be to others - so perhaps highlight that a bit more.

I personally prefer the forum threads being listed as they are currently, tucked away in the corner - but would prefer it if they stayed on every page, as currently they only show on the description page (I think).

But one thing which I have toyed with this week, and mentioned to others in the past, is a way for people to use the development release, for beta testing purposes. So a plugin that could add in the ability to install/upgrade to this release would be extremely useful. I still haven't figured out how to hook into the right places to achieve this or I'd be coding it myself. I personally gave up on beta releases when I got zero responses, but if the upgrade was easier - then I think i could persuade more people to do it. Obviously a stat count for the development release would then be useful (see above).

[hakre]

You asked for ideas, My 2 cents:

1. Better Navigation to access plugin tools for logged-in plugin authors.
2. Easier connection of plugin + wp.org support forum topics (I know there are already some improvements, but I found it hard to use and think this should be dumb-easy for plugin users). Just to ensure that you can tightly connect support topics to a specified plugin.
3. Ability for support forum users (regardless of wether they are a plugin author or user) to re-open closed topics. Issues can take years to be solved and it's always valuable to add additional stuff later on. Recently I run against the wall of a closed topic quite often. Or maybe a "sticky note" per plugin in forums?
4. Additional Syndication to iterate over all plugins of an author (as Ryan suggested as well), like a plugin author feed incl. wp.org support forums so that it's more easy for plugin authors to monitor support forums which would be a benefit for wp.org.
5. The other way round: To add RSS feeds by plugin authors that list their support forums and/or blog regarding the plugin (might be hard to moderate in real life). That would be a benefit for plugin authors. So a lighter approach might be to offer plugin authors more links then author and plugin homepage. I miss the support aspect here as well, as to say, if plugin authors offer their own site for support.
6. Plugin Requirements, like minimum PHP version so that plugin authors have more control over this.
7. Signed Repository: Ensure that plugin updates aren't tampered and the connection is safe when wordpress users are connecting to the repository. Digitally sign the repository and the packages.
8. Specification: What's the protocol and datatypes the plugin repository web-service is using. Specification and version-ing as a contract between all users and wp.org. Building trust. Enable developers to do professional stuff.
9. Privay Documentation: Which data is collected when users use the wp.org plugin repository from with their backend? For what is it used for? Building trust, especially for blog-users.
10. Privay Opt-In/Out: Ask users if they want to take part in the census or not prior to just do it to them. Building trust, again especially for blog-users. Tell them for what this is good for and what might be problematic, so they can make an educated decision.
11. WordPress Usage Data: A location where plugin authors can gather information about the install-base data that wents in the wp-org census. This information should be constantly updated (automated process) based on the live data. It would be nice that this has historical information as well. Maybe queryable. This is very useful for plugin authors and should deal with the problems the current way of publishing those stats is producing. I think this is very important for developers because the projects benefits from their plugins so they would love to not see this as one-way.
12. Plugin collections: The ability for wp.org users to create list of plugins. Next to that to build packages which allow to download/install a bunch of plugins at once. Could be theme + plugins as well. See the Firefox add-on repository for an example.
13. Improve search: Which WP version is expected to work with the plugin? E.g. to allow users to look for their wp version for plugins on the wp.org website.

As a general aim I would formulate: Create balance between plugin users and plugin authors needs. The site works best if it brings both together. Big part of this is support as things are technically light coupled and tend to break from one wp release to the next. Since this is technically not absolutely solvable, the UI / tools should jump in to make dealing with it less complicated. Next to that, trust-building is very important.

[Ryan]

Wait - what? Seriously? What is the possible justification for prohibiting plugin authors from linking to the support forums they provide for hosted plugins?

Okay, an idea for you, Otto: if this "rule" is now being enforced, scrap it immediately!

I strongly disagree. Although I have no problems whatsoever with Justin linking to his paid support forum, that opens a can of worms with people being allowed to not only link to their own sites (which is sketchy at best anyway - due to spam issues) but is a lot worse since it could lead to people using that as an excuse for spamming the support boards with links to their scammy support forums.

I have a paid support forum, but I would have never have posted links to it on the WP.org support forums as I'd have expected to be told off for it.

[chipbennett]

I strongly disagree. Although I have no problems whatsoever with Justin linking to his paid support forum, that opens a can of worms with people being allowed to not only link to their own sites (which is sketchy at best anyway - due to spam issues) but is a lot worse since it could lead to people using that as an excuse for spamming the support boards with links to their scammy support forums.

I have a paid support forum, but I would have never have posted links to it on the WP.org support forums as I'd have expected to be told off for it.

I can certainly see that point; however, lack of support seems to be one of the more continual complaints regarding plugins/plugin developers. If Plugin developers cannot link to the support forums they provide, how will users find that support? The only real alternative left here is to force plugin developers to use the wp.org support forums, which I think is too must of a constraint. Plugin developers can and do have legitimate reasons to host their own support options.

So, where's the compromise? How can plugin developers have the ability/flexibility to provide their own support options to users, without opening the floodgates to exposing users to "scammy" support?

[Ryan]

I think the solution is to simply make it obvious where to go for support via the plugins page - which is what I was suggesting.

The lack of support I'd have thought was due to the developers not providing support, rather than users not being able to find their private support forums.

[chipbennett]

I think the solution is to simply make it obvious where to go for support via the plugins page - which is what I was suggesting.

The lack of support I'd have thought was due to the developers not providing support, rather than users not being able to find their private support forums.

Forgive me, as I'm still working on my first coffee of the morning: I'm not understanding what you're saying.

How can a plugin developer "make it obvious where to go for support via the plugins page" without being allowed to add a link to their support medium?

[Rich Pedley]

That maybe the point, add it as an optional header in the plugin, perhaps using Support URI. That way it doesn't have to be posted in the forums at all.

These days I've started using contextual help to add links to my own forum as well as the WordPress forums for support.

[Ryan]

Forgive me, as I'm still working on my first coffee of the morning: I'm not understanding what you're saying.

How can a plugin developer "make it obvious where to go for support via the plugins page" without being allowed to add a link to their support medium?

I was referring to posting links in the support forum, not the plugins page. I am totally for providing a link on the plugins page, that makes complete sense to me. Currently I just post notices in the readme.txt file for that purpose, but it would make sense for there to be a consistent link in the sidebar IMO.

[chipbennett]

I was referring to posting links in the support forum, not the plugins page. I am totally for providing a link on the plugins page, that makes complete sense to me. Currently I just post notices in the readme.txt file for that purpose, but it would make sense for there to be a consistent link in the sidebar IMO.

Okay, yeah, now I'm with you. :) I missed that part in the OP.