Plugin Testing: methods and metrics

Plugins
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I’ve been looking for a description of how plugins are being tested and so far I can’t seem to find any methodology. Simple statements like “it works for me on X” are hardly conclusive, let alone best practice.

So does the community have an outline of best testing practices and/or a suitable method for testing? Or objective standards/metrics against which plugins can be tested?

At the very least, if CP is to be seen as a sound business-oriented product then it seems to me that the community needs to be setting and maintaining standards which new plugins need to meet, especially where plugins depend on other plugins or where they can radically impact the behaviours or performances of other plugins or the core.

Note: I beg forgiveness in advance: I’ve only spent about an hour browsing the topics here so may well have missed earlier discussions of these issues.

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Plugins that work on WP version 4.9.x should work on ClassicPress version 1, provided that the site is also using PHP version 5.6 or higher.

So, really, there should be no need for particularly stringent testing at the moment. It’s more a matter of confirming what should be true. What’s probably more important is identifying plugins that have a problem with ClassicPress. These currently all seem to be security plugins, which flag the fact that ClassicPress has changed some core files.

Once we get to version 2 of ClassicPress, then we’ll need to be more systematic about testing which plugins work. But, for the moment, I think that simple user reports that “it worked for them” are perfectly sufficient.

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To which I would say: it’s never too early to start defining methods and metrics even if they’re not going to be used until version 2.

4M: metrics, measuring, monitoring, managing. If you can’t quantify it then you don’t have a clue what it’s doing or how it should be behaving.

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I’m sure these are important considerations. But I think it’s a matter of priorities at the moment, and I assume there just isn’t enough manpower (sorry… personpower!) to get everything done. I see top priority as getting out Version1 - once there is a stable version it should attract a lot more attention and followers and supporters.

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That much I understand, and have no quibbles with. But: and it’s a fairly big but, over in the Marketing topics people are trying to frame the business pitch for CP: to outline clearly what CP is, what it offers etc.

The community appears [to me] to be in some danger of divergent thinking.

It’s really very difficult to change a pitch once it’s been presented to business users. So difficult that it’s often fatal. There needs to be a clear direction and goals, with clear strategy.

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