Making WordPress.org

Opened 4 years ago

Last modified 3 years ago

#5231 new defect (bug)

Increase visibility of "old" plugins in Search Indexes

Reported by: dd32's profile dd32 Owned by:
Milestone: Improved Search Priority: normal
Component: Plugin Directory Keywords:
Cc:

Description

Currently we lower the prevalence of plugins in the search index based on how far away from the current stable, but we immediately deindex them in Google (and other) results after a much shorter 3 versions.

I'd like to increase that number to at least 5 major releases, while plugins that are often updated are better choices for a user to select when searching for plugins, when they're searching for a specific plugin they should be able to find it - on WordPress.org or through their preferred search engine.

Increasing that cutoff will benefit end-users ability to find a plugin they're after, while at the same time having at least some limitation at which the plugin is considered retired.

Change History (8)

#1 @dd32
4 years ago

An alternative would be to apply a higher cutoff only to more used plugins, with a higher active install count.

A 1,000 user plugin which is 3 major versions out of date isn't super interesting, but say, a million-user plugin (Such as Limit Login Attempts) where while there's arguably more useful plugins today should still be able to be found.

Last edited 4 years ago by dd32 (previous) (diff)

#2 @jonoaldersonwp
4 years ago

That's a good plan.
Happy with both, though we should probably model the cutoff points.

Something like, 5 major versions, and, add an additional major version for every 500k active installs?

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #core-committers by dd32. View the logs.


4 years ago

#4 follow-up: @whyisjake
4 years ago

Stretching this out def. makes sense to me. It places a lot of burden on plugin/theme authors to put out frequent updates that are just patching version numbers.

#5 in reply to: ↑ 4 @azaozz
4 years ago

Replying to whyisjake:

It places a lot of burden on plugin/theme authors to put out frequent updates that are just patching version numbers.

True, but on the other hand it takes 1-2 minutes to patch the tested up to, and it's needed 2-3 times per year. It is really nice/very reassuring for all of the plugin's users to know that the author(s) have taken the time and tested their plugins in the latest WP :)

+1 to extend the cut-off period to 5 major versions. Also thinking it may be worth it to try to make setting the tested up to even easier to change.

#6 @dd32
4 years ago

it takes 1-2 minutes to patch the tested up to,

For those of us used to SVN, yes, but that's a skill that many people no longer have it seems. Even though it's very similar to Git.
I personally don't bump my tested up to values, as although I know the plugin still works, I haven't actively tested it fully (Plus i don't want people using most of my plugins :) less support that way..)

+1 to extend the cut-off period to 5 major versions. Also thinking it may be worth it to try to make setting the tested up to even easier to change.

When we implemented the new plugin directory (Shifting it from bbPress to WordPress) we actually had a admin UI for setting that, but we had to ditch it for various reasons.

We've now got an 'Advanced Settings' section for managing closing/transferring the plugin so there's the potential that we could re-add that there.

#7 @ocean90
4 years ago

Another case is Gutenberg Ramp which is longer visible in the search. Through, the related support forums still are.

#8 @gibrown
3 years ago

  • Milestone set to Improved Search
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