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  • Joseph Scott 2:16 am on January 12, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    New version of Akismet plugin was released: 2.5.5

    Diff of 2.5.4 to 2.5.5

    Two items:

    • Nonce checks for removing comment author URL
    • Link to configuration page fixes
     

  • Jane Wells 9:02 pm on January 11, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ,   

    This Is Not a Feature List 

    The below notes are a discussion point of reference for today’s chat. This is NOT a feature list AT ALL. This means you, wpcandy and wptavern! :) Seriously, these are just notes so we talk about stuff, not features we are building.
    ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

    “The ‘Customize Your Site’ Release (a.k.a. the one that helps you make things look the way you want them to look)

    Features: a ‘configure and activate’ wizard (Code Name: Gandalf), new default theme, individual improvements within Appearance and/or that show up on the front end

    Core Team: Ryan Mark Westi Ozz Nacin Dion Koop Cave

    54 possible volunteers”
    ========================================

    Feature Possibilities:

    Twenty Twelve theme – Matt, Lance

    Framework for configure and activate (theme + associated custom header, background, menus, widgets) – Koop, Ocean

    • live preview of theme changes
    • activate without configure
    • drag and drop sidebars/widget areas from old theme to new theme
    • configure a new theme, with preview, and then push that theme live
    • easier static front page process

    Better multisite support – Mark, Pete

    • improve UI
    • network enable v activate (parity with plugins)
    • subdirectory installs
    • get rid of ms-files.php (performance win)
    • autocomplete usernames or site names for network admin – Drew, japheth

    Language Packs (can we find some language that makes this more understandable to the average user?) – Nacin, Dion, Sergey

    Project: PinkPonyPress

    • MVC
    • Database abstraction
    • Smarty templating

    Better theme finding – Helen, Mike S

    • infinite scroll on themes screen
    • multiple screenshots per theme

    Better widgets – unassigned

    • widget area locations
    • widget preview, explicit save
    • clean up widgets screen, make it more streamlined

    Better headers – Aaron and sabreuse

    • variable height
    • choose from media library

    Better backgrounds

    • choose from media library

    Settings

    • title tag as a setting instead of owned by theme – Cave, Boren
    • meta description tag in general settings – Cave, Boren

    Media

    • links in captions azaozz
    • imgmagick color profiles?
    • gallery wysiwyg if someone works on it

    Editor

    • TMCE improvements – azaozz, stas

    Mobile

    • Work well in iPad/Fire (responsive CSS) Azaozz, georgestephanis
    • XML-RPC Westi, Max Cutler, Marko (API focus)
    • XML-RPC Joseph, Eric Mann (Bugs/features focus)

    Master Gardening – Ryan, Jon Cave

     

    • Jon Brown 9:16 pm on January 11, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Looks like a good list to start from. Not that we’re voting but +1 to easier static front page process and widget UI.

      I know the list isn’t inteded to be exhaustive, but hoping ticket 18179 (MetaBox Class) stays in and gets handled this round. Also wondering if anyone is interested in ticket 15971 (sorry but it’s well beyond my skills to offer a patch for this one).

    • Erlend 10:09 pm on January 11, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Liking the focus on Multisite. Although it’s not really .org territory, it would be great to finally have JetPack working properly on multisite. I have yet to see a solution to the issues stated in this thread:
      http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-jetpack-by-wordpresscom-jetpack-on-multi-site

    • Joachim Kudish 3:21 am on January 12, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Too bad I missed the chat today. What exactly is “Project: PinkPonyPress”? I’d be interested in participating in that set of features if it will in fact get worked on.

      Also, what happened to a possible json API (to compliment XML-RPC)? Thought there were talks of that for 3.4…

      Was there any talk about how the 54 volunteers (I included) would get their tasks assigned?

    • Jamàl 6:37 am on January 12, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      What about the WP Settings overhaul and the proposed Met Box class? I know that this is NOT feature list, but they sound cool.

    • Ryan McCue 11:50 am on January 13, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Just wondering: why wasn’t Django on the discussion for PinkPonyPress?

  • Joseph Scott 4:12 pm on January 6, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    New version of Akismet plugin was released yesterday: 2.5.4.

    Here is the diff between version 2.5.3 and 2.5.4.

     

    • Marko Heijnen 4:26 pm on January 6, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Little note is that the define of the version still matched the previous one.

    • Ryan McCue 12:53 pm on January 7, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Are you planning to update latest.zip on wp.org? It seems a bit unprofessional not having the latest Akismet on a fresh install.

      • Joseph Scott 7:30 pm on January 7, 2012 Permalink | Reply

        Historically WordPress has not issued new releases for updates to the Akismet plugin. I’m not aware of that changing at this point.

  • Jane Wells 1:42 am on January 5, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , ,   

    Dev Chat Notes for January 4, 2012 

    When we talked about process in today’s dev chat, one thing I forgot is that at core meetup we agreed that we should post the notes and action items from each dev chat, then review the action items at the beginning of the following week’s chat to keep track of things. So here goes!

    Today’s meeting focused on the process to be used for the 3.4 dev cycle and the overarching concept of the release scope. To read through it line by line, see the IRC logs for the January 4, 2012 #wordpress-dev chat.

    Core team presence: Jane, Ryan, Mark, Nacin, Koop, Dion. Late arrivals: azaozz, duck_. Absent: westi, matt.

    Agenda: Review new process proposal that came out of Tybee core meetup, discuss; discuss potential focus for 3.4 release cycle; get statements of interest from people interested in taking more formal contributor role in this release.

    Process

    At Tybee meetup, I proposed we experiment with our process to try and overcome some of our historical downfalls (lack of good time estimation, resource bottlenecks, lack of accountability, unknown/variable time commitments/disappearing devs, overassignment of tasks to some people, reluctance to cut features to meet deadline), and the core team worked as a group to come to the following process proposal.

    Pairs/Teams

    • We’ll divvy up feature development in pairs/small teams rather than assigning anything to one person. Will hopefully lead to better code, happier coders, and more accountability.
    • Each pair/team will ideally have a lead/committer teaming with up-and-coming contributors who want to commit to working on something specific.  Leads, committers, and trusted core contribs will be assigned to a team. Newer contributors can volunteer to work with a specific team but probably won’t be part of the core pair if we’re not familiar with your work yet. This will hopefully make it easier for people to get involved and make connections with the core team instead of lingering unnoticed on a ticket for months at a time.
    • Each team is responsible for their feature being delivered on time and meeting interim deadlines (scoping, blog posts, posting patches, etc.).
    • Each team will only be allowed to claim one feature at a time, and may not claim another until the first is complete. No more claiming multiple features and working on them simultaneously.
    • If a partner/team member goes MIA, rest of team needs to find out what’s up, and if something is seriously wrong, escalate to my attention.
    • We’ll have a list of who’s working on what worked into the 3.4 schedule page.

    Schedule

    • 2-week cycles, no soft edges. Every two weeks there is a bit of discovery, a chunk of development, and a period of testing/fixing within the team.
    • Overlapping team cycles. The 2-week cycles will start on a rotating basis so that teams will be in different phases at all times, allowing for fewer bottlenecks and a greater ability to weigh in on assorted projects. In between each cycle will be several days dedicated to Trac maintenance/bug fixes and tickets related to that team’s project, so that casual contributions won’t pile up waiting for a committer to take a look.Proposed graduated schedule diagram
    • Every week, the pair/team must post a progress report to wpdevel (once we have team assignments, we’ll make a schedule for this, like we did with gsoc student posts).
    • At the end of the two week cycle, team must deliver their scoped deliverable (generally a patch). If they are late, a warning will be issued. If they miss the deadline on 2 of the cycles, the feature will be reconsidered for inclusion in 3.4.

    Time Commitments, Time Tracking

    • Each team will estimate how long each feature should take (# hours, # days – estimate both total time working on it, and how long that will be spread over based on team member schedules).
    • We’ll have some mechanism for reporting time spent on the feature so that we can see how our estimates compare. Not sure if this will be manual or if we’ll use a trac plugin. Investigating options now. Individual “it took this long” stats will be private, but the aggregate “this feature took this long” will be public. This will remove any reason to fudge the time reporting out of fear of looking too slow.
    • Like in any job or volunteer gig, we’ll ask people who are assigned to teams to make a specific time commitment per week to working on core in their team. We understand that circumstances change and the time commitments may need to be adjusted along the way, but this is also intended to help us do a better job of preparing scope and using stats to see how we did. If we’ve scoped features that look like they’ll require a total of x hours per week but we only have y in time commitments, we’ll know up front to start trimming scope. Note: making a formal time commitment will not be necessary for casual contributors, only those assigned as an accountable party in a pair/team.
    • Each two-week cycle will be another chance to get better at estimating how long things will take, and over time we will improve at this as a group.

    Scope

    3.3 was in some ways a multi-featured mess without a unifying theme. This meant lots of disparate stuff going on at once, and a number of features getting pulled due to timing. We want to get back to the idea put forth a year ago about having one overarching concept/goal/theme per release, that all new feature development fits into. We agreed that 3.4′s “theme” would be, “Making it easier to make your site look how you want it to look.” Shorthand: Appearance/switching themes. The idea is that a combination of front-end features, dashboard features, and under-the-hood improvements all tied to managing your site’s appearance will be the focus of 3.4. It will also include smaller things that don’t live in the appearance section but are related to the overarching goal, such as making it possible to have links in image captions. Make sense?

    The individual features will be selected next week, and the proposed list of possibilities will be put up before then in a separate post. We’ll figure out teams, everyone will do their scoping exercises for the features they are interested in working on, and then next week we can hopefully start nailing down who’ll start with what and get the final project plan in place for a dev cycle start the following week.

    High-level, the features would likely include: a theme-setup wizard that would incorporate an option for configuring all the appearance-related stuff before activating a new theme (speaking of, Twenty Twelve is targeted for 3.4), and then specific improvements around menus, widgets, backgrounds, headers, easier static front page process, multisite appearance management, etc.

    Choosing Teams

    This isn’t gym class; don’t be scared. This is, as stated before, mainly about accountability for the core team. In this cycle, anyone paired with a lead should hopefully be able to lead a pair/team in 3.5, and on and on, so we wind up with lots of experienced teams in the mix. For now, that list is fairly short, but if you are interested in having an official assignment or team designation:

    As we divvy up leads and committers we’ll keep your request/offer in mind. If we haven’t seen much code from you, you might want to throw yourself into bug patches over the next week or two so there are some examples of how you approach core code available. Anyone not on a team can work on any ticket and/or bug, and can confer with the appropriate team or with Master Gardener Ryan Boren for assistance as needed. 

    Tentative teams so far: Nacin/dd32/Sergey on language packs, Mark/Pete Mall on multisite, Koop/ocean90 on wizard framework. People who already expressed interest in working with a team or making a time commitment: DH-Shredder, jkudish, helenyhou, drewapicture, MasterJake, tw2113, trepmal, japheth, sabreuse, jorbin, MarkoHeijnen, josephscott, maxcutler, aarondcampbell.

    We’ll regroup next week to flesh out the scope.

    Action Items

    • If you are interested in being on a team and/or making a time commitment, fill in this survey – all devs
    • Figure out core team pairings – core team
    • Figure out best time tracking solution – Jane, Nacin
    • Work out initial possible 3.4 features – Jane (1st draft from meetup notes), core team (catch any misses), everyone (brilliant additional suggestions)

    In case it escaped you, this is a pretty giant change from how we’ve done development in the past. It’s a risk. It could turn out to be the best thing we ever did, or it could crash and burn. Let’s all try our best to make it super awesome!

     

    • Joachim Kudish 2:14 am on January 5, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Survey filed up! Can’t wait to try the new system out

    • Gabriel Koen 2:18 am on January 5, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      In the past, I’ve seen an interesting ticket or two in Trac and me/someone posts a patch but the ticket just lingers — never gets closed or updated or otherwise escalated, the patch rots. What’s the best way to drum up some attention for these kinds of tickets and get them closed out with some kind of resolution? http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/10964 is a good example

      • Jane Wells 2:23 am on January 5, 2012 Permalink | Reply

        In general, post to wp-hackers to get more community input on a ticket, drum up interest in the dev channel, etc. With that specific ticket, it comes down to scribu’s statement: “The status of this ticket is that there’s no clear data on which approach is best, only anecdotal evidence.” When that’s the case, tickets do usually linger until either one approach edges out the others or the bug is seen as growing more serious. We’ve talked about having a time limit on tickets, so that if something lingers too long it gets closed and we move on, but we haven’t come to any agreement on that yet. One step at a time, right?

        • arena 3:32 am on January 5, 2012 Permalink

          Following your advice on your previous post i just wrote a mail to [email protected] updating two patch on two tickets. I am not going to subscribe to the list, just waiting for updates on related tickets.

        • Jane Wells 4:30 am on January 5, 2012 Permalink

          @arena: I don’t think you can post to the list without being subscribed.

        • Lee Willis 9:19 pm on January 6, 2012 Permalink

          Hi Jane,

          I’d be sad to see anything like auto-closing. I have several tickets (All with patches) that I’d love to see in core, and to which there doesn’t seem to be much debate, but not much attention from anyone with the power to commit them either.

          I’d love to see a dedicated bug stream in any release cycle to make sure we’re not missing out on the small changes that can make everyone’s life easier.

          I’m happy to follow the bugs and update patches based on feedback etc. but I don’t have the time to follow wp-hackers I’m afraid – asking people to spend time reporting it there as well as in trac just seems like duplicated effort

          [Although I accept that if there's a debate about an approach etc. to be had then it's probably a better place to do that than on a bug]

          Just my 2p :)

        • Matt 9:36 pm on January 6, 2012 Permalink

          Lee, what are the tickets?

        • Lee Willis 9:44 pm on January 6, 2012 Permalink

          Hi Matt,

          Thanks for your interest. You can find them here. http://core.trac.wordpress.org/report/29?USER=leewillis77

          Don’t get me wrong – I know everyone is busy, and not everything can get done, I was merely arguing that auto-closing would be bad as stuff like this would get lost just because it wasn’t committed quick enough …

    • Japh 3:22 am on January 5, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      This looks great, I’m excited and hoping to get as involved as I can from now on. Survey completed!

  • Jane Wells 8:34 pm on January 4, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ,   

    For today’s dev chat, a whiteboard for reference:

    Proposed graduated schedule diagram

    Proposed graduated schedule diagram

    Notes to self to remember for process chat:

    • process (@jane)
    • pairs/teams (@jane)
    • accountability (@jane)
    • estimating time for tasks (@jane)
    • statement of time commitment in advance/updates when changes (@jane)
    • weekly pair/team blog posts (@jane)
     

    • arena 11:50 pm on January 4, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      where is the integration step ?

    • arena 11:57 pm on January 4, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      btw #18997 has a patch and should be included in 3.4

      thank you

      • Jane Wells 12:03 am on January 5, 2012 Permalink | Reply

        As always, using a thread about something else to call attention to a pet ticket is not recommended. “Bumping” with your own comment is also not great. Better to hop in dev channel and/or post to wp-hackers and get more people to comment on the ticket. When it’s one person and not more of the community, it’s less likely to get committed.

  • Jane Wells 7:23 pm on January 3, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , scoping   

    In tomorrow’s dev chat we will start discussing scope for 3.4. Note: we will not be talking so much about specific features/tickets as about choosing the unifying theme for the release and identifying what kinds of things fit under that umbrella. We’re still planning for the official cycle to begin mid-month.

     

  • Andrew Nacin 2:57 pm on December 28, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    The plugins directory should now update in near real-time. Previously updates only ran every 15 minutes and some other things (namely adding committers) fired less often.

    If you notice any problems, please comment here.

    Thanks @bazza for doing this!

     

  • Jane Wells 12:48 pm on December 23, 2011 Permalink | Reply
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    Core Team Meetup Recap: Multisite 

    These are the notes from a breakout discussion on multisite at the core meetup with me, @markjaquith, and @nacin. As with all of these discussion summaries, please remember that they’re just discussions. I’m posting the notes for transparency purposes, not to say that these are the only things discussed or decided. I’m working from notes, and sometimes you don’t get everything down when you’re taking notes (next year I’ll record these things instead).

    Multisite!

    Who can lead this joint? Since the merge and Donncha moving on to other things, we had Ron for a cycle, Pete for a cycle, then no one. It would be good to have someone act as component owner.

    Multisite needs parity with the single site experience. Includes UI, UX, copy/strings, install flexibility (subdomain etc), installation ease (add a site).

    First we need to improve the manage/use experience, then fix install stuff and get it into the dashboard to turn on multisite.

    We need a useful global dashboard.

    We need to have flexibility in where sites and networks live — should be able to live wherever you want on one network. Subdomains/subdirectories/mapping/whatever you want, mixed subdomain/subdirectory, custom domains, global permalink consumer/router.

    Need to fix different workflows: adding users to network, adding users to site, invitations. User signup, creation, assignment, invitation all need new flow

    We need parity between plugins and themes. Enable vs activation is confusing, need to improve language, indicators. Need ability to network enable but disable for individual sites. Need to standardize network enable/activate etc for plugins/themes. Network activated plugins don’t show in individual site’s plugin list, which is confusing.

    UX Action Items:

    UX ACTION ITEM — Include network activated plugins in the plugins menu and give message that it is automatically on for the whole network (if admin/have rights to see plugins screen).

    UX ACTION ITEM — Autocomplete usernames or site names for network admin and for superadmin everywhere.

    UX ACTION ITEM — Get multisite tag/indicator on plugins in directory, add multisite specific/required indicator.

    Under the Hood Action Items:

    ACTION ITEM — Get rid of MS-FILES.

    ACTION ITEM — Enable install in subdirectory so you can use externals.

     

    • Frank 1:39 pm on December 23, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      Great; i love solutions with mutlisite and i wait now for an global dashboard; current i use the root blog (1) for this job. Great news
      I wish the team mery christmas and really nice new year. Best regards

    • Lauro Faria 1:45 pm on December 23, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      Good.
      These are items that interest me.
      An updated website (multisite), to version 3.3, and found some difficulty in managing permissions and what is accessible by users. It may not have found the right plugin. It aims to improve this item?

    • mitcho (Michael 芳貴 Erlewine) 12:25 am on December 28, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      +1 Happy to help as time allows. I’ve been involved with and rolling out more and more Multisite installs… there’s definitely a lot of space for improvement.

  • Matt 1:14 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    MT has given the typography on WordPress.org a refresh to bring it more in line with our sans-serif (instead of Lucida) approach in the WP dashboard, and also tightened up the vertical space the sub-heads were taking up on the page. Helvetica / Arial is a bit tougher than Lucida at smaller pixel sizes, so drop a comment here if you notice anything funky on the site.

     

    • Jane Wells 1:23 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      For newer contributors who don’t know, MT = Matt Thomas.

    • Emil 1:27 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      Also nicer on mobile devices as well. Nice guys!

    • Alex Mills 1:29 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      • Emil 1:38 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

        so clean

      • Jane Wells 1:46 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

        The new profiles layout is a project Chelsea Otakan and I did a while back, but we didn’t get it coded up until this week when Otto was in town and pitched in. This is a first step toward integrating more activity stream stuff like attending WordCamps, meetups, etc.

      • Dominik 10:59 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

        Seems like the profiles doesn’t have sans-serif yet?

    • Mika Epstein (Ipstenu) 1:50 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      Much much love for the forum level up :)

      Older people + folks with terrible vision comment. The fonts are a smidge too small on the forums. If #forumlist has a fontsize of 12px (instead of 11) and maybe #forumlist a to 13px, it’s just a bit easier on the eyes :)

      • jb510 2:24 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

        +1 – it’s really really tiny on my hi-res MBP’s screen.

        Also anyone know why the Meetups forum reports -73 (negative 73) topics?

        • Mika Epstein (Ipstenu) 3:24 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink

          It needs a re-count in bbPress. It’s from all the support tickets people posted in there that we had to move out, or the spam we deleted.

      • sabreuse 10:45 pm on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

        Am I seeing things, or have the too-small fonts in the forum been tweaked some time today? Anyway, much better, now, and I really like the changes overall!

    • Jeffro 9:41 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      typography was one of the reasons you got involved with B2. All these years later and you’re still tough on creating the best typography.

    • Ben Huson 9:42 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      • Ben Huson 9:48 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

        Whoops, meant to post that in the previous post above plugin headers… duh

        Another nice enhancement might be to add gravatars or something on the plugin author pages too – just a suggestion.
        http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/profile/husobj

        • Dominik 10:55 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink

          I think it would be better to combine both profiles.

        • Mert Yazicioglu 10:13 pm on December 22, 2011 Permalink

          I think user profiles on WP Profiles are going to be used across the site, hence they are redesigning it. If that’s not the current plan, it most definitely should be ;)

    • Chelsea Otakan 12:03 am on December 25, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      humungous yay!

  • Matt 4:21 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    Been giving a lot of thought to how to give plugin authors more control over their plugin pages. In WordPress custom headers have been hugely beneficial in people’s ability to make a theme their own without having to be a designer. (And designers can make them really sing.)

    As an experiment we’ve turned on custom headers for the plugin directory. If you’d like to try out this feature:

    1. Make a 772×250 pixel jpeg or png. (No animated GIFs. :) )
    2. Check it in to your plugin’s SVN directory with the path assets/banner-772x250.(jpg|png). Note that the assets directory is added to your plugin’s root directory, not trunk.
    3. On the next plugin directory refresh (every 15 minutes or so) you should see your image start showing up on the page.

    For an example of this in action, check out Hello Dolly, natch. Our goal is to mainly see how people use them, so if you try this out leave comment below with a link to your plugin!

    Final note: this is just an experiment, and there is a 98.254% chance the dimensions, placement, and text overlay for this header will change in the future, or the idea might not work at all. But I think it’s a nice toe in the water for letting authors really make their plugin pages shine.

     

    • Rev. Voodoo 4:26 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      Hey, that looks pretty darn good! Definitely give folks a little opportunity for creativity! (You sure you don’t want animation?) ;)

  • Matt 4:54 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Put in the flying bee for bbPress. :) http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress/

  • Daryl Koopersmith 5:00 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Debug Bar is showing off some new UI: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/debug-bar/

  • Daryl Koopersmith 5:17 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    You can preview a banner by adding ?banner_url=A_LINK_TO_YOUR_IMAGE to your plugin URL.

  • Mike Schinkel 5:19 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    This is excellent news!

    I think this will result in more companies being interested in maintaining their plugins because they will be able to control their branding and thus it will seem less like just a technical thing to them.

    Thanks Matt, Koop and the rest of the team who are making this happen; you made my day!

    P.S. No .GIF?

    • redwall_hp 11:43 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      If GIFs were allowed, they would have to screen for animated ones. I don’t think we want dancing Rick Astleys or flaming skulls in the plugin repository. Or do we? :)

      • Alex Mills 11:44 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink

        Plus the GIF format just plain sucks. PNG is the way to go.

      • redwall_hp 11:47 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink

        Of course. The animation issue is just icing on the cake.

      • Mike Schinkel 12:53 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink

        @redwall_hp – Ah, good point, I was thinking more about how some images files can be much smaller in GIF vs. PNG, and some images are not a good fit for JPG. But the animation issue does, mixing with your metaphors put the nail in that coffin.

        @Alex Mills: GIF may suck, but JPG is not good for simple raster images and PNG files are typically 2.5 times larges in size than an equivalent GIF files. For a larger image like 772×250, especially where transparency is not really needed, PNG is actually the one that sucks when compared to GIF. :)

        But @redwall_hp had a good point about animations and that does trump image size IMO.

      • Matt 1:23 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink

        FWIW I find PNG-8 files (vs PNG-24) to usually be the same size or smaller than GIFs. Also using a tool like pngcrush or pngslim or http://punypng.com/ gets them even smaller.

      • mikeschinkel 1:27 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink

        Matt: I wasn’t familiar with PNG-8 vs. PNG-24, thanks!

      • Otto 5:28 pm on December 23, 2011 Permalink

        If you’re on Windows, use IrfanView (free) with the PNGOUT plugin option (also free) to produce incredibly tiny PNG images.

  • Scott Cariss 5:24 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    15 mins is so long when you are waiting… Here is mine waiting for the plugin refresh: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-file-monitor-plus/?banner_url=http%3A%2F%2Fplugins.svn.wordpress.org%2Fwordpress-file-monitor-plus%2Fassets%2Fbanner-772×250.png

    I’m not a designer by no means but that doesn’t look too bad for a first attempt if I don’t say so myself :)

    • Matt 5:43 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      I know! Been giving some thought to how we can make that faster.

    • Mark Jaquith 6:20 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      That should be getting faster soon. I want the update process to run continuously, so it’s as fast as possible.

    • Andrew Nacin 4:16 pm on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      There’s a systems request in speed it up, but it’ll take a bit of work. Soon, I hope.

  • miyoshi 5:30 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

  • JLeuze 5:44 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Cool, I like the updated headers, glad to see the plugin directory getting some love!

    I added a banner I doodled up to my plugin Meteor Slides: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/meteor-slides/

  • Matt 5:44 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

  • James Laws 5:51 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

  • Todd Halfpenny 5:51 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    This is a fab idea… I love it.
    Just added a quickie to Widgets on Pages http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widgets-on-pages/

  • Adam W. Warner 5:52 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    I’m a big fan of this for the various reasons already stated about better branding, but my only complaint would be to possibly restrict the height a bit more. As an avid WP user, I would like to see the description a bit more front and center. It gets pushed down quite a bit for my taste.

    …but that’s semantics;)

    • Matt 6:04 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      We also have 88 vertical pixels being taken up by the mostly-useless plugin directory header and login area that could be tightened up.

  • Sergej Müller 5:54 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

  • Ofer Wald 6:05 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Ok, mine should be up soon at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/transposh-translation-filter-for-wordpress/
    Any chances to move the screenshots to a similar directory so that the plugin download will be a little less bloaty?

    • Mark Jaquith 6:22 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      We’re considering just dropping the screenshots from the generated zip files. Obviously that’ll mean that anyone who hotlinks those screenshots from within the plugin will have to change tactics, but it might be worth it to slim down the size of plugin zips.

      What do you think?

      • John Blackbourn 6:25 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink

        +1. There’s no need for screenshots to be in the zip file. The new banner in the assets directory may as well be left out too to keep it slim.

      • Ofer Wald 6:27 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink

        You have my vote on dropping those as soon as you can, and maybe even add some sort of gallery to the plugin page if its worked on. Will be more than happy to assist (given a point of contact) :)

      • Tammy Hart 6:27 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink

        +1. This would make a lot of sense.

      • Mika Epstein (Ipstenu) 6:41 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink

        +1 as well. Yes. That would be awesome.

        (Bad hotlinkers, no cookies)

      • Aaron D. Campbell 6:47 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink

        +1 – I like it.

      • James Laws 6:50 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink

        +1 for me as well.

      • Matt 6:52 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink

        For back compat we can continue to support (and include in zip) screenshots in main part of a plugin’s repo, but there’s no reason we couldn’t allow people to move things to the assets directory as a replacement. (Haven’t thought about versions, though, maybe we can ignore it.)

      • Joost de Valk 7:31 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink

        +1 here. Anything we can do to make the downloads smaller so fewer issues occur is nice.

      • Mark Jaquith 7:31 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink

        It’s not that many plugins that hotlink their own screenshot files. Here’s the list. We could probably notify them directly of an upcoming change. Or heck, just whitelist them.

      • Joost de Valk 7:32 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink

        BTW would that also mean being able to do the screenshots in something like a fancybox / thickbox / colorbox? I’ve always thought they look a bit weird…

      • mikeschinkel 8:48 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink

        +1

      • Ryan Hellyer 12:07 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink

        +1 Sounds like a sensible approach.

      • Andrew Nacin 4:18 pm on December 22, 2011 Permalink

        Yeah, I’m thinking we support /assets/ for screenshots. Can make it backwards compatible easily. Thinking versions aren’t necessary as they’re only shown on the plugins page (and wouldn’t be included in the zip at that point). Only someone viewing an old version’s readme.txt and trying to match the numbers up would pose any sort of a change in the user experience.

      • camu 8:37 pm on December 26, 2011 Permalink

        +1!

      • Ian Dunn 5:16 pm on December 30, 2011 Permalink

        +1. Move them to the /assets dir.

  • Marcin 6:06 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

  • Mert Yazicioglu 6:13 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Great idea, it looks great! :)

    Also, is there any chance of replacing the Downloads Per Day graph with a JS-based one?

  • Mark Jaquith 6:21 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

  • Hugo Baeta 6:25 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

  • Jeremy Herve 6:27 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Well, isn’t this awesome? I already liked the changes that you rolled out yesterday, it is good to see the plugin repo getting sexier! :)

    I took the opportunity to update my Facebook apps plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-facebook-applications/

  • matt mcinvale 6:49 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    that is awesome! now i need to find something equally as awesome to use for my header images.

  • David Hollander 7:09 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    It’s like Christmas for plugin developers… Thanks Matt! I love this…

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/foxyshop/

  • Duane Storey 7:24 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Nice change!

  • Joost de Valk 7:26 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

  • Tammy Hart 7:31 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Okay, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I’ve committed my jpg to my new assets folder, but it’s not working. When i download the image from the browser, it says it’s corrupt. http://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/recipress/assets/

  • Mark Jaquith 7:39 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Here’s a fun one. Contains the complete usage instructions for the plugin right in the banner, and an example of what it looks like. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/login-logo/

    • Joost de Valk 7:49 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      Somehow I think most of my plugins will never be that easy to make headers for :)

    • jb510 3:52 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      I trust Fredrick is already hard at work on a banner like this for W3TC, right?

  • Chris Hurst 8:02 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    I just started messing with this a little bit, took me a few minutes to figure out how to add the assets to the SVN, but I got it working eventually. Here is a link to a few more tips I learned in the process and a link to my plugin…
    http://mywebsiteadvisor.com/2011/12/update-your-wordpress-plugin-header-image/ http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/transparent-image-watermark-plugin/

  • John James Jacoby 8:12 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Testing ideas with BuddyPress: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress/

  • Mert Yazicioglu 8:15 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Just put something simple for now: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-move/

  • The Frosty 9:22 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

  • Mika Epstein (Ipstenu) 9:34 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    This is the only one I’m actually happy with :) (the wrong size is being fixed…)

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/impostercide/

  • Lee Willis 9:47 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

  • Rahe 9:59 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

  • John Lamansky 10:20 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

  • James Collins 10:41 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Great idea guys!
    You’ve given me a reason to once again pretend that I’m good at Photoshop: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/typekit-fonts-for-wordpress/

    • Matt 11:10 pm on December 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      No need to pretend, if you can crop you’re in. :)

  • Ryan Hellyer 12:04 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Awesome. Thanks Matt :)

    • Matt 1:13 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      Thank Koop and Otto, they coded the whole thing up!

  • Matt 1:25 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

  • Alex Mills 1:47 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Just committed a banner but I didn’t get an e-mail notifying me of the change like I would if I were to make a change to some code in my plugin.

    Is this intentional? A bug?

  • Stephen Cronin 2:33 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Wow, this is great! But…

    There will be some who cross the line with marketing / spamming etc. How long until someone sells a “Brought to you by ” ad in the banner image for their plugin? In some cases that might be acceptable (if the company sponsors the development of the plugin). But what happens when it’s a less than reputable ad (like an adult ad or promoting a non-GPL product)?

    It would be good to have some up-front guidelines about what’s acceptable, *before* this becomes a problem.

    • Matt 4:23 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      Anything that doesn’t follow the plugin directory guidelines will be removed or taken over, just like if they put something bad in the code.

  • Matt 5:34 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    HyperDB now has one — http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/hyperdb/

    It works for geeky plugins too! :)

  • John Blackbourn 9:49 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    I thought I’d be cheeky and display a couple of testimonials from people who use my plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/user-switching/

  • Vladimir Prelovac 11:06 am on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Kudos for the holiday gift. Great idea!

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/worker/

    • Jane Wells 2:18 pm on December 23, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      Hi Vladimir. It doesn’t say anywhere on your plugin page that the plugin ties to a paid service. Can you please include this information on the description page? If you’re not sure where to put it, you could do what Akismet does on theirs with a PS. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/

  • Gajanan 12:21 pm on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Finally rtSocial is up after 15 minutes of long wait. Its looking awesome though :) http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/rtsocial/

  • tuxlog 12:40 pm on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Great Christmas present, I just put one on http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-monalisa and one on http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-forecast. Wouldn’t it be nice to see a smaller banner in the plugins details thickbox in wordpress?

    Thanks a lot from tuxlog

  • Lee Rickler 2:47 pm on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Is it just me or is there now a character limit in the description text? I’ve checked a few plugins and they also seem to be cut off but in different points.

    Sexy new header added:
    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/point-and-stare-cms-functions/

  • MichaelH 4:48 pm on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Be great if the plugin author(s) info could be moved back up near the top of the plugin page to go along with this new branding. Thanks.

  • David Decker 6:36 pm on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Great idea – you guys rock!
    I’ve added my plugin “Genesis Layout Extras” to the list
    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/genesis-layout-extras/

    …all my other plugins will follow in the next days :-)

  • Chuck Reynolds 8:12 pm on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

  • Martin 9:25 pm on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

  • arena 10:39 pm on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

  • arena 11:13 pm on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    i just posted a new one (fancy) on http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mailpress/

  • Chris Clayton 9:10 am on December 23, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Beautiful addition to the plugin directory!
    IMHO, This would also be really nice for the theme directory too :) Those tiny screenshot make my eyes twitch. :p

    Oh, and while we are in the process of doing some amazing things to wp.org could we also turn on buddypress and bbpress theme preview support for wp-themes.com… It’s annoying not being able to preview the themes properly before installing.

  • Marcel 12:04 pm on December 23, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    It’s great! Many thanks for this feature.
    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lazyest-gallery/

  • Adam W. Warner 2:24 pm on December 23, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Hey all, I just wanted to show you a social sharing use case that this addition of plugin banners has allowed:)

    http://pinterest.com/wppro/wordpress-plugins/

    • Adam W. Warner 2:45 pm on December 23, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      I’m “trying” to keep up with all the plugins listed here and keep them added…it may be a few days before yours makes it into the list;)

  • Helen Hou-Sandi 4:23 pm on December 23, 2011 Permalink | Reply

  • Ade 12:54 pm on December 26, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    Great idea. Thanks to Koop and Otto!

    And here’s one of mine: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/dynamic-content-gallery-plugin/

  • Ian Dunn 5:20 pm on December 30, 2011 Permalink | Reply

    What I’d really like to see is the ability to create custom pages, beyond just Installation, FAQ, Screenshots, etc. My FAQ page (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/basic-google-maps-placemarks/faq/) is overloaded, and I’d like to be able to break it out into multiple pages.

  • Todd Halfpenny 11:56 pm on January 1, 2012 Permalink | Reply

    The spankingly new Lanyrd Splat Widget is also sporting a banner… still loving this!
    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lanyrd-splat-widget/

  • Ian Dunn 5:46 am on January 4, 2012 Permalink | Reply

    Another thing that’d be great would be if screenshots could link to the full-sized version. Right now the CSS is setting a max-width of 530px, which makes full-screen images hard to read. I create my screenshots at 960px (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/basic-google-maps-placemarks/screenshots/) so that people can see the full pages if they want, but right now they’d have to open or download the images individually in their browser to do that.

  • Ron 7:51 pm on January 9, 2012 Permalink | Reply

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