Marketplace scoring algorithm update

The October marketplace hosts almost 500 products created and shared by you, the community. As the number of plugins and themes grows, the competition gets more intense. In order to support the most active developers and successful products we've made an update to the scoring algorithm used to rank products.

The scoring algorithm is used primarily to determine how products are listed on the marketplace. Products with a high score will be shown at a higher position in the product list than those with a lower score. There are several factors that go in to calculating the score, including the submission date, update activity and how many people are using it.

From today the algorithim has been tweaked to favor products that are more active. This will give newer plugins and themes a better chance to reach a higher position faster, if they are actively marketed. This means that older plugins that rely on their legacy position may be affected as their score has been lowered due to inactivity. In other words, the marketplace now better reflects the recent market activity and innovations.

We think this creates a fair incentive for all authors, including those with older products, to maintain a high standard for customers who are looking for quality. The same marketing tools are available for everyone: social networks, tutorials, demonstrations, blogging and promotions. The best approach, as always, is to build and maintain quality work.

Deleting projects

You spoke and we listened! We've just released an improvement that allows you to delete projects. Previously this action was unavailable because of paid plugins and themes, deleting a project would also delete the paid license to use them, like throwing away money. The solution is quite simple, when a project is deleted, all the paid products belonging to that project are flagged as unassigned. This allows you to reassign them to a different project, effectively transferring the license.

You should notice a new Settings tab on a project in the projects dashboard. In here you can find some new options:

• Reattach product - if you have paid plugins or themes from a previously deleted project, reattach them here.
• Delete this project - if you delete this project, any purchased plugins or themes will become available to reattach to another project.

Once a plugin or theme is reattached to a project, it becomes locked to that project, unless that project is deleted too. This means you still cannot individually remove a paid product from a project, they only become available when the project is deleted permanently.

We have also left room to include another option to Transfer this project to another user. This feature is slightly more complicated and will be made available some time in the future.

Keep sharing and growing what's possible!

October is really coming of age lately, the community is filled with people who love to share. We love hearing your success stories and seeing your published work. There are some exciting ideas coming in and the future is looking bright for the platform's features and possibilities. The project has started to take a shape of its own with many supporters, partners and maintainers coming from all over the globe to help. We would like to take the opportunity to thank you for taking action and being a part of it. Thanks to you, October is truly becoming a platform made for real people.