Installing Plugins – Improve Search Options

  • While searching for plugins to add to WP, certain details are only visible after clicking the ‘Details’ link in the search results. For people who don’t like using untested plugins (or at least when picking plugins to use in a site for a client), it gets a bit tedious at times trying to find te ‘perfect plugin’. What I propose is essentially a two-part change:

    Part 1: Improve Search Feature
    While searching for plugins, a small tick-box next to the ‘Search Plugins’ button labelled ‘Tested Plugins’ or something similar could be added. Selecting this would only return results that have been tested and have at least one confirmed ‘working’ report for the currently installed version of WordPress. Option can / should be disabled by default.

    Part 2: Search Results List
    The list of results from the search currently shows four columns: name, version, rating and description. Considering the majority of monitors used on modern computers, there is ample space for more columns without the list becoming crowded or unreadable. It would be a nice touch to have a column added between ‘version’ and ‘rating’ to show the highest version of WordPress that the plugin has a confirmed working report of.

    Perhaps as a ‘consolation prize’ for the plugins this feature hides from the list, a note could be shown above the search results with a single line stating something like “[number] plugins were not included in this search. Click here to search again with these plugins.”

    Motivation
    I feel these changes changes would streamline the ‘Add Plugin’ feature quite nicely without reducing the chance of a newly added or updated plugin from being found by those who want it. Yet at the same time, it should help a fair amount with less experienced WordPress users accidentally using experimental plugins and breaking their blog…

    Could someone involved with or at at least in contact with the WordPress Dev team perhaps share some thoughts on this idea?

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

  • I’m not a Dev, but I agree. I find searching for plugins quite frustrating. There’s thousands of plugins, quite a few who do more or less exactly the same thing. And you always get results with plugins who aren’t maintained and doesn’t work with newer versions of WP:

    At least beeing able to exclude plugins from the search would be nice. An advanced search where you could exclude non-maintained and old plugins.

    Some kind of system to force developers to work together instead developing plugins that do the exact same thing would be nice. This shouldn’t prevent forks of course, but quite a few plugins are the result of just one developer with an idea and the time. They wrote the plugin for themselves and then shared it (which is great), but when everybody does that you end up with a lot of bad plugins for one feature, instead of one solid and well-maintained one.

    I agree fully for improved search and filtering, sorting!

    Thread Starter ZaLiTHkA

    (@zalith)

    Thanks for the support.. ??

    Just to be a bit more clear here: I’m not suggesting this in order to stop people from using untested or newly developed plugins… I use them myself quite often, so I definitely wouldn’t say they should be avoided.

    The main reason behind my suggestion was to try make it easier for less experienced users to find plugins that are easier to use and have a lower possibility of causing problems.

    It would (obviously) also help a theme developer to find the best plugin for a customer’s website when there isn’t enough time to do thorough testing though, so I feel this should benefit the majority without any compromise for the amazingly skilled people who create the plugins to start with…

    +1

    I also agree, searching and browsing the plugin repository is currently not particularly efficient, there are some simple things that could be done to improve the search feature tremendously.

    – list of related plugins (i.e. dependencies)
    – list of similar plugins
    – comparison of features between similar plugins
    – e.g. side by side comparison table for features of similar plugins
    – list of compatible and incompatible plugins
    – flagging of plugins that are no longer actively maintained
    – feature-based tracking: highlighting plugins with overlapping features
    – as well as plugins which may complement others
    – number of active developers
    – suggested/recommended plugins
    – i.e. list most popular by category
    – tested/reviewed plugins
    – only list plugins for a certain WP version

    At the moment, people usually need to resort to googling for finding good plugins – thus it might be helpful to provide a way for bookmarking plugins or even to provide a “remote-install” option for installing a plugin remotely by providing the website/domain and login credentials for the dashboard.

    Also, it would actually be helpful to optionally return to the previous page, after installing a plugin via the dashboard, so that you get to see the same view as before.

    Thanks

    woccax

    Reverend Dr. Linda De Coff

    (@reverend-dr-linda-de-coff)

    Yes, My Word Press personal blog site doesn’t have the Plug In Feature installed on it. How do I get this feature installed?, so I can add Akismet to avoid current heavy spamming. Thanks for the help. Rev. Dr. Linda De Coff/https://revdrlindadecoff.com

    Please post your own topic.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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