[wp-hackers] About page for a plugin?

[Nicholas Ciske]

You should not do this as it assumes your plugin is the only one running or being upgraded, but of course it's not. In fact, hijacking the admin is explicitly prohibited in plugin guidelines #11:

"Plugins should not hijack the blog admin. It is fine to include an Upgrade prompt on the plugin admin page, but not throughout the blog. It is acceptable to embed a widget on the dashboard but this should be the same size as others and be dismissable. It's fine to put an error message at the top of the admin for special cases, but it should be linked to a way to fix the error and it should be infrequent. Any form of "nagging" is absolutely prohibited."
http://wordpress.org/plugins/about/guidelines/

If you really want to notify users of changes after an upgrade, use an admin notice to link to your about page (as these can stack up for multiple plugins).

But consider that this may just be annoying (see nagging provision above) and not very beneficial to anyone in the end. If they care, they know where to find your plugin -- unless there are breaking changes, user required actions, or something *really* important -- what's so special about your plugin that it needs this, when thousands of plugins get by without it?

Also, make sure the user can cancel that notice (e.g. make it dismissible) if they don't care to read your page.
http://www.webdev-tuts.com/how-to-create-closeable-admin-notice-in-wordpress-dashboard.html

_________________________
Nick Ciske
http://thoughtrefinery.com/
@nciske	

On Apr 25, 2014, at 7:50 AM, TV productions <info at tv-productions.org> wrote:

> Hi list,
> 
> I am a plugin developer and I use an about page for my plugin to show users the latest changes. It is an about page like the WordPress about page (wp-admin/about.php).
> I redirect users after installation, activation and update to this about page.
> 
> Then a more technical part of it: imagine that you update some plugin from which at least two plugins use an about page (and use the same technique to redirect to that page), the user will see probably only the about page of first plugin.
> 
> I am wondering if it is right to have an about page like this. I mean, should only WordPress have an about page and plugins not? Are there any alternatives? What about the redirect after (bulk) plugin update?
> 
> I would like to hear your opinion on this and/or the way you inform users about the changes in a new release.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Ties
> 
> -- 
> TV productions :: Web development and stuff
> http://tv-productions.org
> _______________________________________________
> wp-hackers mailing list
> wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com
> http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo/wp-hackers