How about we build a widget?

Question

Ta-da-bump.

I just lost half page of text on this so I'll be brief this time. :(

• Would you like WP widget to promote WPSE and/or your activity on it?
• What killer features would you like to see implemented?

Plan (wishful thinking):

1. Decide on features.
2. Code.
3. Host in official repository.
4. Promote via community ad.

Old code

So, here is my draft of widget. Feel free to suggest (or code in) improvements:

/*
Plugin Name: WP Answers Widget
Plugin URI: http://meta.wordpress.stackexchange.com/q/246/847
Description: Launch countdown and stats widget for WordPress Answers StackExchange site
Version: 0.1
Author: Andrey "Rarst" Savchenko
Author URI: http://www.Rarst.net
License: GPL2
*/

add_action( 'widgets_init', 'wpanswers_widget_init' );

function wpanswers_widget_init() {

    register_widget( 'Widget_WP_Answers' );
}

class Widget_WP_Answers extends WP_Widget {

    function Widget_WP_Answers() {

        $widget_ops = array( 'classname' => 'wpanswers', 'description' => __('Launch countdown and stats widget for WordPress Answers StackExchange site') );
        $this->WP_Widget( 'wpanswers', __('WordPress Answers'), $widget_ops );
    }

    function widget($args, $instance) {

        extract($args);
        echo $before_widget;

        $beta = round ( ( strtotime( '2010-11-10' ) - time() ) / ( 60*60*24 ) );

        $title = 'WordPress Answers';

        if( $beta > 0 )
            $title .= ' Beta';

        echo $before_title . "<a href='http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/'>$title</a>" . $after_title;

        echo '<ul>';

        if( $beta > 0 )
            echo "<li><strong>{$beta}</strong> days of beta left</li>";

        $stats = $this->query_api( 'stats' );
        $stats = $stats->statistics[0];

        echo "<li><strong>{$stats->total_questions}</strong> questions</li>";
        echo "<li><strong>{$stats->total_answers}<strong> answers</li>";
        echo "<li><strong>{$stats->total_users}<strong> users</li>";

        $hot = $this->query_api( 'questions', array( 'pagesize' => 10, 'sort' => 'month' )  );
        $hot = $hot->questions;
        shuffle( $hot );
        $hot = array_slice( $hot, 0, 3 );
        echo $before_title . "<a href='http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/?tab=month'>Hot questions</a>" . $after_title;

        foreach ( $hot as $question) {
            $answers = $question->answer_count > 0 ? " ({$question->answer_count} answers)" : '';
            echo "<li><a href='http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/{$question->question_id}'>{$question->title}{$answers}</a></li>";
        }

        echo '</ul>';

        echo $after_widget;
    }

    function query_api( $method, $query = array(), $api = 'http://api.wordpress.stackexchange.com/1.0/' ) {

        $url = $api . $method;

        if( !empty($query) )
        $url .= '?' . http_build_query( $query );

        $response = get_transient( md5( $url ) );

        if( false === $response ) {

        $response = wp_remote_retrieve_body( wp_remote_get( $url) );
        $response = json_decode( $response );

        if( !empty( $response ) )
            set_transient( md5( $url ), $response, 60*60*12 );
        }

        return $response;
    }
}

Download: http://dropbox.rarst.net/wp-answers-widget.zip

Answer 1

Hi @Rarst:

Great idea, but can we have a broader vision? How about an "official"[1] WordPress Answers plugin maintained by the interested members of WordPress Answers (you, me, @EAMann, probably others?) with a vision of being more than just a countdown clock?

Even better, I'd suggest we do one for all StackExchange sites, not just for our own. That way any WordPress user could be made aware of us by participating in one of the other sites, and all the other sites would promote the plugin/widget.

Thoughts?

-Mike

[1] I mean "official" only in as much as we the community agree that it represents us, nothing more.

UPDATE

I thought I had posted this before but found in my editor, so...

Focus on Blog Owner's Motivations

I think the key will be to do some classic marketing analysis i.e. identify our "market segments" and then create a marketing "strategy" for each.

In our case our market segments would be the different classifications of blogs and of authors and the strategy would be to identify what would motivate each of them. For example, simplistically you have:

1. Single Author Blogs (like yours)

2. Multi-Author Blogs (like wpbeginner.com)

3. Media Company Blogs (like Mashable)

I'm sure there are a lot of other segments but we can start here with some broad and sweeping generalizations:

1. For Single Authors blogs, typically they want to promote themselves and/or drive traffic to their blog.

2. For Multiple Authors blogs, typically they want to encourage people to write for them and to drive traffic to their site.

3. For Media Company blogs typically they want to drive traffic to their site and look essential in the eyes of their advertisers. I also think they are most likely to view WordPress Answers as competition so unlikely to be willing to drive traffic to WA unless we could give them far more value than we take so they'd be willing to support "co-opetition."

Identifying strategies targeted to each group will ensure we see that largest adoption. The key question is "What would make each of these targeted users go out of their way to install and configure our plugin?"

Discussion?

-Mike