WordPress.org Now Have Reviews for Plugins and Themes

Earlier this month, we wrote an article on our vision for a better and more engaging WordPress plugin directory. This weekend, we are at Tybee Island, GA for the first ever annual WordPress Community Summit organized by the WordPress foundation. Otto (@otto42) finally unveiled the reviews for the WordPress.org themes and plugins directory.

As mentioned in our last article, one of the problems we identified was that people were not held accountable for their actions. They would rate something 1 star and leave. This could be done by a competitor plugin author and since there was no accountability, it was really easy to do it. With the addition of reviews, we will get rid of that problem because it adds accountability to each rating.

A user MUST write a review in order to make their rating count. The profile design is still not updated entirely to integrate this. Currently it just adds your rating in the activity tab where it says: “Started a new topic in WP.org forums”.

It would be neat if it says: Rated a plugin “Name of Plugin” – title of rating. Another nice addition would be if it shows rating + reviews under user favorite plugins list.

The reviews feature is really nice because you can always edit your review in the future if need be. Reviews are also threaded, so users can leave a comment on your review if they want. It would be nice to see a functionality like Amazon’s “Did you find this review helpful” to feature top reviews.

We understand that this is the first step in the right direction. Additional feature enhancements will be added in the future. Now the WP.org team has done their job. WordPress is nothing without its community. Please help others by rating and reviewing plugins that you use.