Add ability to Search Plugins within Categories like Recommended and then have option to order plugins by popularity or # of installations

[aranorton]

As a relatively new WordPress user, it is very overwhelming to be presented with tens of thousands of plugins with very little idea which ones work well, which ones are the best in each category of functionality, and which ones are really needed on my WordPress website. Google research only goes so far and is pretty time consuming with everyone having a different opinion. It would be so much more helpful if the Search Plugins function could do a keyword search within the categories like Recommended, Popular, Featured, etc. It would also be great if the results could be presented with the option to order them by the rating highest to lowest or largest number of installs to least number of installs instead of just presenting the results in any random order. They could also be ordered by which version of Wordpress they are compatible with or which PHP version they work with. This ordering option should also be available to a regular keyword search as well. I really don't want to go through 300 pages of, for example, widget plugins to find what I need because the one with the most installs is on page 299. Maybe you could add an option to choose how many of the sorted plugins the user wanted to see, like only show the first 25 of the most installed widget plugins. From an extremely overwhelmed newbie, please help!!!

[SergeyBiryukov]

Hi @aranorton, welcome to WordPress Trac!

Thanks for the ticket, we're already tracking this enhancement in #31192.