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.

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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.

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:

recommended-reading-email-example

 

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.

Screen Shot 2016-11-21 at Mon Nov 21 7.50.11 PM.png

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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.

editing.gif

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:

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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:

Screen Shot 2016-08-08 at 4.34.33 PM

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

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

Call for Testing: Site Export

Hey there! I’m Jordan, a developer working on the new Site Exporter for WordPress.com and would love to hear your feedback.

What is it?

This adds a new tab on your site’s Settings page, for exporting all post content. The exported content can later be imported into another WordPress site – either on WordPress.com or your own hosted site.

WordPress.com Site Export

What to test

  • Can you export all content from your site?
  • Can you export a specific selection of content from your site?
  • Can you download the export file when complete?
  • Do you receive an email after the export completes?
  • Are you able to take the exported content and import it into a new site?
  • Is there anything you found confusing during this process?

To get started, head to https://horizon.wordpress.com/. Click My Sites, then choose Settings from the sidebar, and finally click the Export tab.

We’d particularly like to hear of any issues you might find when exporting very large sites with many posts or pages.

Please note that the export file won’t contain theme settings. This means that a new site using imported data will not necessarily look the same as the original site.

We’ll continue gathering feedback until June 21st, 2016.

Call for Testing: Theme details pages

Hello again! I’m Davide, the product design lead for the Theme Showcase. Today we’d like to open for feedback our next big piece related to themes: the theme details page.

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What is it?

The theme details page includes all the informatoin about a single theme: screenshots, overview, feature details, setup instructions, live preview, and links to support pages.

What works:

  • All the details about a theme: overview, setup, screenshot.
  • Live preview.
  • Activating the theme if you’re already a user, registering with that theme if you’re not (logged out).
  • Box with theme features.

What will be added soon:

  • Related themes

Note also that this design is meant to accommodate other changes in the future: taller screenshots on the right for example, which is why today the page might seem a bit too heavy on the left. In other words, this is the foundation that will enable future things to be tested and added.

 

What to test?

We’d like to know:

  • Your overall impression: does it present a theme better than our previous showcase page (example)? Is it easy to find the setup and support information? Is it intuitive to activate the theme?
  • Any bug or frustration you feel while using it.
  • Anything that you feel it’s missing?

Try the following activities:

  1. Go to My Sites on Horizon, and tap “Themes” in the left sidebar.
  2. Pick any theme, tap “•••” and select “Details”.
  3. Check the page that shows up, and imagine you’re reading it like you would to choose a new theme.
  4. Do the same for a few different themes.
  5. If you have a test site, try enabling a few themes and see how the overall process feels.

Write any feedback you have as a comment to this post, even multiple comments if you find different things at different times.

We are going to gather feedback about this specific sequence of tasks for next week, and if there aren’t any major issues, we’d like to launch this feature around June 13th.

Call for Testing: Plugins Page

Hey testers! I’m a designer working on WordPress.com, and we’d like your feedback on a new page — WordPress.com Plugins.

What is it?

Screen-Shot-2016-04-19-at-4.37.26-PM.png

This adds a new sidebar item that allows users to see all of the plugins available on WordPress.com.

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We hope this clears up a lot of confusion for new users, but we also want experienced users and paying customers to know exactly what plugins they have. As we add more features and plugins, it will be a helpful reference.

What to test?

Just look for the new Plugins sidebar link. It will only be displayed if you have a single WordPress.com site selected. If you have a Plan, the corresponding plugins will appear activated. Each plugin links to a support article.

We’d really like to know your general thoughts about this change:

  • Do you think this would be helpful for new users?
  • Is this page clear and informative?
  • Would you want any additional information on this page?

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 one week, until April 28th.