Plugin Directory, API: Return one new plugin field: 'php_plugin_name'

[alberttarress]

We have noticed that a huge amount of plugins are defining their name on the main .php file in a 'simplified' way, while when defining the readme.txt name, they add a more 'SEO-friendly' large name.

We can see an example with the following plugin: Everest Forms.
If we look at the name they define on their main file 'everest-forms/everest-forms.php', it is just "Everest Forms" (displayed on the normal WP plugins list page).

But when looking at the readme.txt file, we notice its name is "Contact Form by Everest Forms – Simple Contact Form to Advanced Contact Form, Quiz, Survey, & Custom Contact Form Builder for WordPress"

The same is done by more and more plugins every day.

We think this change on the plugin name might be confusing for some users, since if the user clicks on 'view details', the plugin name displayed is the one from the readme.

Not only that, but a whole lot of external services that fetch the Plugin Directory API are retrieving this 'long' name, instead of the name that every user sees on the plugin's list page.

Probably the plugin name from the main php file is not currently being stored on the plugin directory. It might be useful seen the differences between both names.

[sflwa]

As a plugin author myself, it hadn't even occurred to do this. To me the name is the name - and should be concise. The other information is marketing / description. I would think there should be some sort of check to make sure these match / are standardized

[dd32]

Welcome to Meta Trac @alberttarress, and having discovered a huge annoyance of mine :)

The plugin name difference here is due to plugin authors SEO'ing the search index (IMHO) as matches in the plugin name are more important (As.. shockingly.. a search for a plugin name should return the plugin named that..)
I'm not going to go in too much further detail here, to avoid duplicating discussion of the below tickets here.

I've previously discussed this with multiple people, some documentation of this is in #7577 and my preference is to remove the duplication: #6106

This ticket is a duplicate of #7644 and to a lesser degree those linked above.

[alberttarress]

Replying to dd32:

Welcome to Meta Trac @alberttarress, and having discovered a huge annoyance of mine :)

The plugin name difference here is due to plugin authors SEO'ing the search index (IMHO) as matches in the plugin name are more important (As.. shockingly.. a search for a plugin name should return the plugin named that..)
I'm not going to go in too much further detail here, to avoid duplicating discussion of the below tickets here.

I've previously discussed this with multiple people, some documentation of this is in #7577 and my preference is to remove the duplication: #6106

This ticket is a duplicate of #7644 and to a lesser degree those linked above.

Thanks for the explanation!

I see. I've also thought it was for the search, specially when observing they add a ridiculous ammount of keywords on their SEOy name.

I didn't know about those tickets, thanks for sharing. I agree it is a good solution to just remove the duplication :)