Plugins Check page: A new milestone

I'm excited to announce another milestone in the Plugin Checker project!

I posted a few months ago about the release of the Plugin Check page on Mozilla.com and we've been working Since October 13, we've had about 2.4 million page views, averaging to about 40K page views per day (around 3% of all page views on mozilla.com).

In an effort to increase traffic to the page, we started an Adwords Campaign on the Google network. Since starting the campaign, we've gotten an average of about 2K more page views per day, which though helpful, wasn't giving us the increase in page views that we were hoping for. Search Marketing is a great way to bring users in to a page if they already know what they want or what they're looking for. But because the PluginCheck page is a new concept (and most people have no idea what Plugins are or why they should care) it's hard to expect a huge influx of page views on Search Campaigns alone.

A Better Solution

So, to try and get as many people as possible to come to the page, I've been working with Sean Martell and the WebDev team to build some dynamic buttons (similar to our Affiliates buttons) to help us spread the word about Plugins and the Plugin Check page. You can see them below:



Concept

The basic idea is that community members and other people who find the Plugin Check page useful could place the button code on their blogs or personal websites to help spread the word about staying safe on the Web. Other people would then click on the image, go to the Plugin Check page, and after seeing how useful it is, then place the same button on their website/blog.

Use Cases

1. A user on Firefox.
A user goes to a website where this button is posted and sees the Default image ( in blue). Script will run in the background to see if the user's plugins are up-to-date. If they are, the user will see the green "You're Up to Date" image. The user will see the Orange "Caution" image if they have one or more out of date plugins.

2. A user on another browser.
A user goes to a website where this button is posted and will only see the deafult image ( in blue). If the user clicks on the button they are taken to the Plugin Check page where they can learn more about Plugins. The Plugin library cannot yet support Plugins for other browsers, but once it does, then these users will have the same experience as people who use Firefox.

Spread the Word

Take this opportunity to go to the Plugin Check page and paste the badge on your personal blog or website. Share the page with your friends and family and remind them to check their plugins regularly. The best way to stay safe on the Web is to be proactive about staying up-to-date with the latest version of Firefox and of all the Plugins you use.

Coming Soon

We currently only have one button size available, but I'm working to get more size options on the page as soon as possible. We are also working on improving our Plugin Library and enabling others to help us keep it up to date--stay tuned for more on that project. Lastly and most importantly, 3.6 will be the in-product debut of the Plugin Checker, finally allowing you to check your Plugins through the Add-Ons manager.

Big thanks to Sean Martell, John Slater, Elise Allen, Austin King, Les Orchard, Mike Morgan, Stephen Donner and Raymond Etornam for all their help making this happen!