One Line Or Less, Does NOT Cut It!
Having been following the latest WordPress plugin releases for a couple of months, John H. Gohde has been becoming increasingly frustrated. Is there a contest going on for writing the briefest and most obscure descriptions of WordPress plugins imaginable? John wants to know why the WordPress plugin developers seem to have so much trouble clearly articulating what their plugin actually does.
System analysts start out programming projects by doing a thorough study of the existing systems. And, put everything down on paper in plain English. Specifying in great detail exactly what the goals and objectives are. And, precisely what the new system yet to be developed is going to do.
WordPress plugin developers apparently take the exact opposite approach. Knowing what they want to do. They immediately start knocking out PHP code. And, end up winging it until their coding is remotely functional. Ending up totally burnt out, the plugin developer is too tired to explain what their new plugin actually does. And, how it works. Let alone talk about who might benefit from their creation. Or, why somebody might actually want to be using their plugin.
One Line Plugin Descriptions
One of the worst plugin write-ups was about image thumbnails which gave you a one sentence description. It directed you to the WordPress Plugin Directory which in turn essentially repeated the same nearly identical brief plugin description. The plugin home page hyperlink linked to the author’s soft porn Web site’s homepage which featured pictures of scantily clad female models.
Pretend for a moment Mr. Plugin Developer, that a potential user might not fully understand what your plugin actually does. Something you wrote caught their attention. Curious, they are now interested in reading more detailed information about it. You know. Something remotely descriptive about the functionality of the plugin. Certainly, the last thing that they want to do is waste yet more of their valuable time trying to locate your non-existent plugin information.
Do NOT Cut It!
The last time John checked, the entire point of a blog was to write posts which consisted of the written word, even if it is mostly about naughty pictures. Yet, here we see plugin developer after plugin developer who are totally lost for words. Plugin Developers who thought so much of their creation that they could barely get out a burp about it. Apparently, every blogger is supposed to have ESP with an innate ability to figure out just exactly what a plugin does, merely by osmosis.
John H. Gohde would like all plugin developers to know, that just perhaps, some blogger out there might want to know why you bothered to create your plugin in the first place. Would it be asking too much of you to clue a few more bloggers in on what you think is so great about it?
While it has been fun imagining what your plugin just might do for us, John thinks that it is about time that you simply told them in plain English.
