One of the best models I think out there for asking for reviews is to produce an unobtrusive popup after a certain amount of days of using your software. I’ve seen it done before (the best example I find is the one used in the What The File plugin), and can lead to a lot of reviews.
Popups, despite being universally hated by sections of the community, are annoyingly good at converting, as you capture the user’s attention. Whether that is worth the sacrifice of mildly irritating readers, I’m not sure, but what I like about What The File’s implementation is that it fits in with.
Here’s code on how you can build similar into your plugins. For this example, we’re using a generic base, so if you want to use this code in public, be sure to add your own prefixes.
1. Set an Option on Activation To Set The Date
The first job is to make sure we set the date correctly. By default, WordPress doesn’t have an “activation date” setting on it’s plugins, so we’re going to have to set it.
Luckily, there are hooks we can hook into. One we can use is the “register_activation_hook” that – upon activation of a plugin, runs whatever we need.
So the function we need to run gets the time of activation, and then adds it to the option page. This is very simple, two line function, which you can see here:-
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 | /** * Get the current time and set it as an option when the plugin is activated. * * @link https://www.winwar.co.uk/2014/10/ask-wordpress-plugin-reviews-week/?utm_source=codesnippet * * @return null */ function winwar_set_activation_date() { $now = strtotime( "now" ); add_option( 'myplugin_activation_date', $now ); } register_activation_hook( __FILE__, 'winwar_set_activation_date' ); |
Notice we use add_option, as adding an option doesn’t overwrite any option that is currently present, so a user can activate or deactivate the plugin without this value changing.
2. Display A Notification To Review After X Days
We don’t want to display the notice right away, as that can be seen as desperate for a review, and we’ll be taking before we give.
As a result, we’ll make something appear after 7 days, to do this we’ll use strtotime again to make sure that there has been 7 days since the plugin has elapsed. If so, we’ll add to the admin_notices our admin notice prompting the user to leave a review.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 | /** * Check date on admin initiation and add to admin notice if it was over 10 days ago. * * @link https://www.winwar.co.uk/2014/10/ask-wordpress-plugin-reviews-week/?utm_source=codesnippet * * @return null */ function winwar_check_installation_date() { $install_date = get_option( 'myplugin_activation_date' ); $past_date = strtotime( '-7 days' ); if ( $past_date >= $install_date ) { add_action( 'admin_notices', 'winwar_display_admin_notice' ); } } add_action( 'admin_init', 'winwar_check_installation_date' ); /** * Display Admin Notice, asking for a review * * @return null */ function winwar_display_admin_notice() { // Review URL - Change to the URL of your plugin on WordPress.org $reviewurl = 'http://wordpress.org/'; $nobugurl = get_admin_url() . '?winwarnobug=1'; echo '<div class="updated">'; printf( __( "You have been using our plugin for a week now, do you like it? If so, please leave us a review with your feedback! <a href="%s" target="_blank">Leave A Review</a> <a href="%s">Leave Me Alone</a>" ), $reviewurl, $nobugurl ); echo "</div>"; } |
3. If Dismissed, Set An Option To Never Show Again
However, we’ll need to make sure we don’t annoy our plugin users. To do this, you need to allow the user to dismiss the notice, never to be shown again.
This is quite straightforward, you will notice we’ve started this previously by setting a “$nobugurl”. We will check for this URL and, if present, set an option which bypasses all we’ve done so far.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 | /** * Set the plugin to no longer bug users if user asks not to be. * * @return null */ function winwar_set_no_bug() { $nobug = ""; if ( isset( $_GET['winwarnobug'] ) ) { $nobug = esc_attr( $_GET['winwarnobug'] ); } if ( 1 == $nobug ) { add_option( 'winwar_no_bug', TRUE ); } } add_action( 'admin_init', 'winwar_set_no_bug', 5 ); |
Notice we run this before the code is run in step 2 by setting the priority in add_action to 5. This is so that this check is made before the admin noticed is displayed. It prevents the user having to click the “Leave Me Alone” link twice.
That sets the option, but we’ll have to add a couple of new lines to the code created in Step 2 to run a check if this option is present. To do this, we’ll have to add the following lines to winwar_check_installation_date():-
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 | /** * Check date on admin initiation and add to admin notice if it was over 10 days ago. * * @return null */ function winwar_check_installation_date() { // Added Lines Start $nobug = ""; $nobug = get_option('winwar_no_bug'); if (!$nobug) { // Added Lines End $install_date = get_option( 'myplugin_activation_date' ); $past_date = strtotime( '-7 days' ); if ( $past_date >= $install_date ) { add_action( 'admin_notices', 'winwar_display_admin_notice' ); } // Added Lines Start } // Added Lines End } add_action( 'admin_init', 'winwar_check_installation_date' ); |
That’s the basic installation, you will probably want to expand it if you use it on actual plugins (in particular step 2, you may want to check if the current user can install plugins), but that’s the basic code.
I’ve uploaded the code to Github, which runs the basic check outlined above. You can download it here.
Thoughts? Have you implemented it into your plugin? Any way to improve this? Please let me know in the comments!
Update: Ryan Hellyer has improved on this code significantly, and put it into a class. You can check out his class here.
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