Call for research participants: site builder

Howdy WordPress.com users! My name is Dave and I’m a designer on WordPress.com.

There’s a new opportunity for you to test out a feature on WordPress.com. We are looking for a handful of people to participate in unmoderated user research, which means you’ll have the chance to give your honest feedback on a feature without me or anyone else being present. You’ll be given a set of instructions and you’ll be asked to talk about your experience with a particular part of WordPress.com. It’s best if I don’t reveal too much beforehand, but I can tell you it’s about designing a site from scratch.

Requirements:

• Chrome web browser
• A mic on your computer to record your voice
• Up to 45 minutes of your time
• A WordPress.com account

This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of WordPress.com by providing your insights and opinions. As a thank you for your time, participants will be gifted a free year of their WordPress.com plan.

If you are interested, leave a comment on this post so that I can contact you! Make sure you are logged into your WordPress.com account when you comment.

New WordPress editor: call for testing and feedback

Hello everyone! With release dates fast approaching, we would like to get as much feedback and testing as possible, as soon as possible, for our work in integrating the new WordPress block editor into WordPress.com.

What is it?

The new WordPress editor makes it easy for anyone to create rich, flexible content layouts with a block-based UI. All types of page components are represented as modular blocks, which means they can be accessed from a unified block menu, dropped anywhere on a page, and directly edited to create the custom presentation the user wants.

Blocks can be rearranged and positioned just right, showcasing your content with a unique and professional-looking design.

How to test:

1. Go to the new WordPress editor on Horizon and select a test site.
2. For the deepest integration experience, try activating either the Photos or Radcliffe 2 theme on your test blog. But don’t worry – the new editor works with all themes.
3. Create a new post, using whichever blocks and media you choose. For some inspiration, you can see the live demo.
4. Publish your new post.
5. Verify it looks as you would expect on your site.

Testing ideas:

1. Try embedding a video from any of our supported video services.
2. If you participate in a site with multiple types of users, try creating a post from another role such as Editor, Author, or Contributor.
3. Type / into an empty block to search for which block you would like to add next.

Feedback we would love to hear from you:

• Let us know about specific tasks you tried to accomplish, their steps, and what you saw as results.
• Were there any problems that blocked you from completing your writing goals?
• Did you notice any styling or layout issues?
• How did you find working with media and embeds?
• How did writing in the new editor compare to your past experience of writing on WordPress.com?
• Is there anything else you’d like to share about your experience with the new WordPress editor?

Please leave your feedback and comments below. Thanks so much for your help!

Call for Testing: New Post Notifications in Reader

Hi everyone! I’m Jan, designer for WordPress.com’s Reader. We’d like to get your feedback on v1 of New Post Notifications, a new feature we recently added to the Reader.

What is it?

When you Follow a site in Reader, it’s easy to miss new posts especially from your favorite sites.

To help address that, we now let you opt-in for New Post Notifications. If enabled, this will allow you to receive notifications (desktop and on any device with the WordPress app installed) when your favorite site publishes a new post.

This setting can be accessed from the Site Stream (this is where you find a stream of posts coming from a single site.
Example: http://horizon.wordpress.com/read/feeds/66550777):

Or the Manage page for sites you’re already following:

What to test:

• What is your overall impression?
• Were you able to successfully enable new post notifications? If not, can you please explain why?
• Was the new post notification setting easy to find?
• If you navigated away from the site stream, is it obvious how to turn this setting back off?

How to test:

1. Go to Reader on Horizon.
2. Find a site you would like to get new post notifications from.
3. Navigate to their Site Stream.
4. Follow this site and enable the “Notify me of new posts” setting.
5. You should get a notification in your Notifications panel when this site publishes a new post.

Please leave your feedback and comments below. Thanks so much for your help!

Call for Testing: Calypso WP Super Cache Extension

Hi, I’m Bernie, a developer on the team working on the WP Super Cache (WPSC) Extension for Calypso. WP Super Cache is one of the most popular WordPress plugins and we’re asking for your help in testing it before we release it to the world! This round of testing is perfect for people that have used WPSC before, but it’s also fine if you just like to try and break things 🙂

1. To do so, you need a self-hosted WordPress installation with the Jetpack plugin enabled and connected to WordPress.com. Please use a test site that isn’t of any practical relevance to you — while we don’t expect it to happen, we’d hate if you lost any data!
2. Navigate to https://horizon.wordpress.com/plugins/wp-super-cache (you need to be logged in).
3. Scroll down, and click the ‘Install’ button next to your JP test site.
4. A link saying ‘Edit plugin settings’ should now appear right below the plugin header. Click that link.

You’ll be greeted with the following screen:

Start by switching on the ‘Enable Page Caching’ toggle.

You might notice that WPSC offers a large number of controls to fine-tune caching. How are you supposed to know if and how they work if you’ve never used WPSC before? Well, you could read the WPSC description on WordPress.org, and we certainly appreciate if you familiarize yourself with it.

But you don’t have to. Instead, we ask you to open your site’s wp-admin interface in another browser tab and compare them. (Find instructions below the image.)

1. Open your site’s wp-admin backend in another browser tab, and navigate to Settings > WP Super Cache.
2. Change an individual control’s value inside the Calypso extension (don’t forget to click the Save Settings button).
3. Switch over to the wp-admin tab, and reload. Verify that the control that you changed inside Calypso has been carried over.
4. You can also try the inverse — change a setting in the wp-admin UI, and verify that it carries over to Calypso (again, don’t forget to save and reload, respectively!)
5. Be sure to also check the front-end part of your website to verify it’s not broken by any of your changes.

Please leave your feedback in the comments below. We’re mostly interested in any errors you run into at this point, but you’re also welcome to comment on any smaller glitches you notice. We’re aiming for a release of the extension on Wednesday, August 23, 2017.

Call for Testing: Comment Management

Hey testers! I’m Jacopo, a developer working on WordPress.com, and we’d like your feedback on a new feature — Comment Management.

What is it?

This is a new sidebar menu that allows you to manage all of your comments on WordPress.com.

Up until now, the notifications panel was the only place where you could manage comments on WordPress.com. In notifications, you can like, approve, trash, spam, and reply to comments. This will work for most people, but we also want to provide a dedicated comment management interface for advanced users.

For those of you who have used the WP Admin interface for managing comments —  we are completely redesigning the interface on WordPress.com to make it easier to use.

I won’t explain the interface too much, because it should be easy to understand. If it’s not, we want to hear all the feedback you have if you run into any issues! Here are just a few benefits of the new interface:

• Easy to use on your phone.
• Condensed list makes it easy to read more comments at once.
• Quicker load times.

Future enhancements

You might notice that some features are missing. We are working hard to add some major enhancements in the near future! These are some of the features we are planning to add soon:

• Bulk edit.
• Quick actions in the comment list.
• An info panel that will show more user detail, like IP address.
• Comment editing.
• Comment searching.
• Block users with one click.

What to test?

• First and foremost, manage your comments! Make sure all of your routine actions behave as expected (like, approve, trash, spam, reply).
• Try undoing several actions.
• Switch sites if you have more than one.
• Try using a Jetpack site.

Write any feedback you have as a comment on this post, and thank you for testing!

We are going to gather feedback about this idea for five days, until Monday, August 14, 2017.

Call for Testing: Calypso HTML Toolbar

Hello! I’m Jacopo, a developer on Team Lannister, and I have been working on bringing the HTML Toolbar to Calypso.

WHAT IS IT?

The HTML Toolbar is a set of tools that add things like bold, italic, blockquote, image, code and more to your posts while in HTML editing mode. A few of the latest updates include, but are not limited to:

• Clicking on a tag button will alternate between “open” and “close” tags.
• The “Close Tags” button will close all open tags.
• If clicked while selecting an URL in the post content, the “Link” button will smartly recognize it as the URL for the link () tag.
• The toolbar is a single-line scrollable element.
• The toolbar sticks to the top of the page when scrolling.
• The Insert Media / Contact Form button.
• Undo/redo ability.
• Drag and drop media.

Some of the current limitations are:

• The toolbar is only sticky on large enough screens.
• No undo/redo for IE11 — IE11 lacks the JavaScript function needed to make it work.
• Cursor position is not synced when switching between modes.
• Must scroll to the top in order to switch modes.
• The toolbar only recognizes tags inserted via the toolbar itself. An open tag manually written or pasted in the post content won’t be affected by the “Close Tags” button, and it won’t be closed by clicking on that tag button.
• Buttons available in WP Admin’s HTML Toolbar not yet included: Proofread, Add Poll, Add Location, Add Embed.

WHAT TO TEST?

Try the following activities:

• Go to Horizon, start editing a post and switch to HTML mode.
• Try opening and closing tags via the toolbar.
• Check for cross-browser and cross-OS issues.
• Try to undo/redo as you normally would in your usual workflow. Does it work as expected?
• Drag and drop the types of files you’re used to working with.
• Try inserting media and contact forms.

WHAT TO REPORT?

We’d like to know:

• Do the actions feel right to you?
• Does undo/redo work as expected?
• Any issues with inserting media?

Please add any feedback as a comment on this thread.

We are planning to test this feature until Monday, March 13, 2017.

Call for Testing: Jetpack theme uploads and activation

Hello! I’m Davide, the design lead for the Theme Showcase. We’re about to release some interesting improvements to the way we manage Jetpack websites and we’d like your feedback.

WHAT IS IT?

If you have a Jetpack website you will be able be able to do two new things: upload a new theme directly from the showcase and to try and activate any of our free themes.

What works:

• Uploading any theme on your connected Jetpack site.
• Trying and activating free WordPress·com themes.
• Deleting uploaded themes.

What will work soon:

• Live Demo of free themes link from the “•••” popup action menu.
• All Sites view still missing (if you have more than one site).

WHAT TO TEST?

Try the following activities:

• Make sure you have at least Jetpack 4.4.2 (quick installation link) and it’s connected to WordPress.com.
• Go to My Sites on Horizon and select your Jetpack site.
• Open “Themes” from the sidebar.
• Try to upload a WordPress theme (you can download the zip from the .org showcase).
• Try to preview and activate uploaded themes.
• Try to preview and activate free themes.
• Try to delete an uploaded theme.

WHAT TO REPORT?

We’d like to know:

• Your overall impression: is there anything confusing?
• Are the messages clear enough?
• Any bugs that you find.

Please add any feedback as a comment on this thread.

We are planning to test this feature until Monday, February 6, 2017.

Call For Testing: Recommended Reading Emails

Hi, everyone! I’m Jeff — an engineer on Team Delta. We’re working on delivering WordPress.com content recommendations right to your inbox. Hopefully, your recommendations will be interesting, engaging, and relevant to you. Any feedback you can provide is greatly appreciated!

What is it?

Emailed recommendations are calculated using an algorithm which takes into account the sites you like and follow. They should get better the more you click through and interact with other WordPress.com sites. They will be sent approximately weekly, will have around 5 recommended posts, and look something like this:

 

How to Help Test

1. Reply to this post and mention your WordPress.com username so we can add you to our list.
2. Wait for a new “Recommended Reading” email to appear in your inbox.
3. Let us know if there are no posts in the email which are relevant to you.
4. Look for any mistakes or broken links.
5. Check for accessibility problems.
6. Be on the lookout for another email in approximately a week & report as above.

We are planning to test this feature until Monday, January 16, 2017.

If you have feedback about these emails, please leave a comment on this post. Thank you for your help!

Call For Testing: Image Editing

Hi! I’m Kerry, a JavaScript Wrangler and project lead for the new Image Editor in WordPress.com. The Stark Team has been hard at work, and we would love to hear your feedback.

What is it?

With this update, you will be able to rotate, crop (including preset image ratios), and flip images directly from the media library.

To Help Test

1. Go to https://horizon.wordpress.com/post and select a site if prompted.
2. Click the “Insert Content” button (a circle with a plus symbol inside).
3. Upload a new image or select an existing one.
4. Click the “Edit” button at the lower left of the media window or click the pencil icon that appears on the selected image when you hover over it.
5. Click the “Edit Image” button on the image details screen.
6. Try out rotating, cropping, and flipping images.
7. Try to restore the original image and check to make sure it worked.

Known Issues

• You cannot yet click on an existing image in the post editor to get to image editing. You must use the insert image button in order to edit an image.
• The Image Editor isn’t available for private sites or Jetpack sites managed through WordPress.com yet.

We are planning to test this feature until Monday, December 12, 2016.

Please provide feedback in the comments on this post and thank you for testing!

Call For Testing: Custom Content Types in Calypso

Hi! I’m Kat, the lead of Team I/O. We’ve been hard at work bringing Custom Content Types into the Calypso environment, and we’d love to hear your thoughts. This feature is going live within the next few days, but we will continue to make changes and improvements based on your feedback.

What Is It?

Custom Content Types are also known as Custom Post Types, or “CPTs”. In addition to blog posts and pages, WordPress sites can support many other types of content, often added by themes or plugins. Certain themes display these special content types differently from the others, creating a richer experience.

With this feature, you can now create, manage and edit any type of post without having to leave the WordPress.com dashboard.

How To Test

To get started, head to https://horizon.wordpress.com and click on My Sites. In the sidebar, you’ll see any enabled custom post types under the Publish header:

On WordPress.com, we support Testimonials and Portfolios for all themes. You might see some others there depending on your theme and settings.

You can view and change the post types you have enabled by clicking on Settings, near the bottom of the sidebar:

Try adding, editing, listing and searching your custom content types. In the editor, try to test all the functionality, including previewing, adding media, and categorizing/tagging posts. Take note of anything that seems broken, missing or confusing.

We’d particularly love to hear from you if you use WordPress.com to manage posts on your self-hosted site via Jetpack, especially if you’ve added your own custom post types and taxonomies.

Caveats

• Currently, hierarchical custom post types are shown as a chronological list, rather than ordered by parent-child relationships. We plan to add a hierarchical view soon.
• In order to manage any custom post types that have been added by your theme or plugins, they must first be whitelisted so that they’re accessible via the API. There are instructions on how to do that here: https://developer.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/custom-post-type-and-metadata-support-in-the-rest-api/

Please leave your thoughts and questions in the comments! We’ll continue gathering feedback until August 17, 2016.