Just wondering what everyone thinks about creating forum subcategories within the Plugins category for community plugins currently under development? For example:
Plugins => Classic Commerce
Plugins => Classic SEO
This could then maybe refined further. For example:
Plugins => Classic SEO => Issues
Plugins => Classic SEO => Releases / News
Plugins => Classic SEO => Feature Requests
Any thoughts?
I don’t mind subcategories for community plugins, but breaking them down even further sounds like category-hell 
This would open a can of worms though. Then, who do allow to have their own subcategory? Wouldn’t every plugin developer then want their own subcategory?
And if we say, only “Community Plugins”, what does that mean? Technically, all plugins are “community plugins” because they are all hosted on GitHub where anyone can submit PRs.
Plus, “Community Plugins” is vague at the best of time, and there is still confusion around whether they are CP developed plugins or not.
This is part of the reason we specifically didn’t open it up. But I would love to hear some feedback 
Yes, I’m thinking can of worms too.
@wadestriebel - is there any available option in the forum more like tags?
I like the idea of dedicated forums, but, considering that there are only ~10 posts per month in the Plugins forum (122 posts over 12+ months,) I don’t think there’s a demonstrated need for it.
Edit:
This should all be done elsewhere. For issues and feature requests, GitHub. For releases and news, social media and our own sites should be encouraged, rather than turning the forum into a free-for-all for plugin/theme devs to launch release notes and “news” about their plugins. Even though I’m a plugin developer who could write volumes under such rules, I’m not a fan of the idea of using the forums for release notes and news about really anything other than ClassicPress.
There is, this post for example has the “community” tag on it. Which you can see more posts with that tag here: https://forums.classicpress.net/tags/community
Err, OK… next question. How is this set? I can’t see any way to add a tag.
I tend to agree with this, even though we did set up a Classic Commerce area in support. I only see this as a temporary measure. We have classiccommerce.cc registered and I think this will eventually be the place for all support and discussion.
A hidden box
Discourse has a lot of hidden features, but you should be able to see it when you create a new post:
Ahh… and if you click in the box it shows the tags in use already. That might be a useful feature (if people actually used it).
Are the tags site-wide, or can they be narrowed down to individual categories?
Site-wide by default, but we can restrict certain tags to categories if we wanted to
One of the most important things to me is ease of access.
In my experience to date, people have avoided using GitHub. Any reports of bugs in Classic SEO have been done via the forums which I personally don’t mind.
GitHub is a scary place for a lot of people, on top of which, you need a GitHub account to raise an issue. I just don’t think GitHub is a “friendly” environment for your average CP / WP plugin user.
I’m not saying the forums should be a free-for-all. I’m just saying it would be great to have a single point of access for information relating to a plugin’s development, and where anyone can make feature requests or raise issues with ease.
As for what is a “community plugin”. Given that Classic SEO is a ClassicPress research project, I would certainly consider that a community plugin.
Some people prefer GitHub. Others prefer the forums.
I don’t disagree, I just think it would open a can of worms that doesn’t need to be opened yet. If we were getting double or triple the number of new threads relating to the plugins then I would agree that it would probably be time to open a new category.
I think using tags for now makes sense
Agree 
Asking people to raise an issue on github for a problem will eliminate 90% of your input.
It’s cool that you don’t mind … it just sets a precedent that I would avoid.
I also mentioned social media. Indeed, I’m not a fan of sending users to GitHub. However, having an account to raise an issue is not much of a hurdle.
I see your point…just feel that encouraging support, release notes, feature requests, bug reports on the forum is not the answer.
I think the reality is that this will happen in multiple places. So it may be necessary to monitor them all, and make announcements on them all. You may find you need to cater to different people’s “comfort zones”… for some Github is their second home (definitely not me); some live on social media (not me); I personally use forums a lot, and look in on Slack occasionally (but often miss stuff there as it moves too fast).
If you really want a centralised point then a specific website for the plugin may be the best option, or one for all your plugins (like @anon71687268).
This is something we discussed earlier this year in the context of the plugin directory - we’ll need some sort of support forums for plugins, and it seems that this is pretty much the same thing.
Alas, we never decided how to do it, so perhaps this is a good time to revisit that discussion.
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. And instead of sending people to different websites all over the place (including the forums, slack, github), I definitely think it would be better to have one place where they can go.
My day job means that I don’t have the time to monitor all these different places which is why I choose to visit Slack only on the odd occasion. And to my mind, therein lies a different but related issue - the fact that all these different discussions are happening in different places.
But back to my original point, anything that makes life easier for the ClassicPress user has got to be a priority imho - as long as it doesn’t create problems for developers of course. Likewise, anything that keeps people here on ClassicPress instead of driving them away elsewhere has also got to be good. And remember, I’m only talking about “community plugins” here.
And just one small observation. Classic Commerce already has two forums - one under General Discussion and one under Support so there already seems to be a precedent. But I don’t see worms crawling all over the place. 
Yes, that was an early, messy development and led to a good discussion that clarified things I think. Starting here: ClassicCommerce or Classic Commerce? Status as a research plugin? - #9 by anon71687268
We will be putting the lid back on that can at some stage and I hope not too many worms get out. 
But I agree that it would be ideal to have one central place where you can search for plugins, download them and get support.
