Many thanks to you and @ElisabettaCarrara for working on this. I think there may be a fourth user that we are not yet addressing, and that’s the web professional who is building websites but may not consider themselves a developer, per se. I’m in that group – I have built and currently manage quite a few websites, but I am not a developer.
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You’re definitely right @BlueSkyPhoenix
We suspected that we would find distinct personality types within the main dev persona, but we were waiting for the data before refining it.
That is why we also wanted Tim and others like him to complete the dev survey, because there may very well be a few “devs by necessity” who wanted specific functionalities on their sites for the primary services they provide, who realized that sometimes what they needed just wasn’t available (and in a number of cases, decided to build it themselves).
But there are also marketing professionals who build websites who are quite happy with the existing tools in the ecosystem and we ought to cater for them too.
I think we should add web professionals as a fourth distinct category before completing the needs polling.
@ElisabettaCarrara Are you okay with a fourth?
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Other than reading your posts on the forum? No.
Extrapolation…
It’s not hard. We’re a lot alike.
You showcased your one legal membership site on a thread of sites that run CP.
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Impressive!
Same with me. I started to complete the survey and got to the question about whether I’m a plugin, theme or core developer. I don’t consider myself any of those so I assumed the survey wasn’t aimed at me. So I didn’t go any further.
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I am ok with as many needed.
@ozfiddler maybe I should add the “I create sites without being a proper developer” to core/themes/plugins?
…I am one myself…
I’m a little confused about who this survey is intended for. It started off sounding like it was for developers, and to me a developer is a programmer… someone who codes.
But are you saying you are wanting any CP user to complete it?
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I don’t know if anyone noticed that the question uses a radio control instead of a checkbox, as if you can only be one of them…
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Not quite any CP user, Oz. @ozfiddler
There will be separate surveys for other user types.
For this one, we are interested in a user who has designed at least one “custom” solution for their site or for a client site. Even if it is a very simple one.
So someone who has at least some rudimentary understanding of code as opposed to a more “passive consumer” type if this makes sense.
We would like to see if there are similarities / startling differences between these and the “developer by trade”.
Joy is right about radio buttons vs checkboxes for the core / plugin / theme question.
It originally asked which do you primarily develop for (create code for).
There is actually a good reason for asking this as outlined earlier during the thread.
Perhaps the way to solve the issue would be to add options for “none” and “I spend my time relatively equally on all of these.”
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For me, the survey felt a bit all over the place as I went through it. It could have used a bit more fine tuning. That said, I’m not feelin’ the idea of taking it over and over again as it iterates. I spent about 20 minutes on it to really think it through, but, still had more blanks than I’d have liked.
Some specific areas of difficulty in answering…
-
The radio buttons instead of checkboxes were limiting; I could have marked them all.
-
Some questions had a lot of options, but they were so specific that none applied.
-
The age/gender questions; I haven’t answered these types of questions in a decade.
-
The question about what other programming languages we knew seemed irrelevant. The list of options pretty much encompasses the entirety of ClassicPress.
-
The question about which items to keep in core, move to plugins, etc… the options seemed backward so I had to keep re-reading it to be sure. It had:
- 0 = This is a useful function. It should be enabled by default in the Core.
- 5 = No CP resources should be committed to this function. It should use a third-party plugin.
This is intended as constructive criticism. I think it’s great that @ElisabettaCarrara and others have jumped in to get this moving – it’s always inspiring to see people working together. 
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Thank you for taking the time to help out. It is really appreciated.
Believe it or not, blanks are useful in an analysis like this too 
Or rather, which combinations of questions the respondent answered.
There is room for improvement in terms of the “user experience” part of the survey and I think that can be improved before making it available to people outside of the CP community without the need for people to re-take each iteration.
You can do conditional surveys with the Google form, right?
Q1.
Have you ever created a custom solution for your site or a client site?
(This includes contributing to core infrastructure, writing a simple custom plugin, making use of your functions.php file or making custom alterations to your theme.)
If no, exit the survey and display the message “Thank you very much for your time. Please keep an eye open for our consumer survey.”
Since the developer question causes confusion, this can be addressed by:
Have you used WordPress?
Never
1 - 5 years
6 - 10 years
More than 10 years
and
How long ago did you create your first custom solution for your site or for a client site?
(This includes contributing to core infrastructure, writing a simple custom plugin, making use of your functions.php file or making custom alterations to your theme and it can be on any CMS platform.)
Never
Less than a year ago
Less than 5 years ago
Less than 10 years ago
More than 10 years ago
With regard to the radio button issue:
When you create a custom solution, it is most likely a:
Contribution to core
Plugin
Theme
Equally likely to be any of the above
None of the above
The web professional concern can be improved slightly by:
If you provide websites to clients, what would motivate you to recommend ClassicPress to them?
and by adding
When creating a custom solution, this is most likely to be for:
Myself
A client site
A repository / directory
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Going to address amendments this afternoon.
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I was creating websites in html/css/php and then added WordPress as a cms to existing designs to give easier editable areas to pages. Then as time progressed WordPress became the main frame work. I have a base theme I use (mostly my own), and just create custom pages to match the design, edit the functions file and a plugin folder.
I have created sites with custom fields without using a plugin although I used some copied and edited code.
I edit existing js, php etc. but would be really pushed to create a whole site from scratch. (I know there is no point in recreating something that already exists even just from time constraints ) so where possible I use existing pieces.
I would not regard myself as a “developer” but where on the developer scale does this put me?
Here is a screenshot of how the poll appears in my browser
Hallo @Mark
Thanks for helping out.
It is really appreciated.
This would mostly come out in your coding skills.
So, personally, I’d say “3 - I can adapt existing code to suit my needs” for all the coding languages where this applies, as this is what you mostly do, even though you could theoretically create an entirely new plugin.
As to plugin vs theme, that would depend on what you personally spend more time on.
If it is a close thing, pick your “gut instinct” (what you feel a closer affinity for / enjoy more).
Hope that helps clarify.
Have a lovely (what remains of ) the weekend!
I’ve completed the questionnaire on second attempt.
As a short aside, there are radio buttons where there should be checkboxes and then checkboxes where should be radio buttons.
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No problem.
As I’ve said before, unlike people like @anon71687268, I don’t regard myself as a real developer; all of my plugins were created to add functionality I wanted rather than for other people.
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That is exactly the sort of useful, actionable data we need in order to be able to build a user experience journey, @azurecurve 
We expect to see some at least three personas (personalities) under the dev profile (perhaps more).
There is method to the madness, I promise.
We suspect that “devs by necessity” are likely to use and to contribute to open source code.
And a couple of other things, but that is a long post. Lol.
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Hi ALS,
I don’t have time to read 90 posts right now in this thread 
If it is possible to do a recap so also for others is more simple to understand the discussion?