Make the plugins index page more focused on search

[ewinslow]

I've always thought search should be a more primary action. Can we:

• Get rid of that wall of text (people ignore blah-blah text anyways)
• Visually promote searching. It's shoved off to the side too much. We also need to support text based search, not just category and Elgg version, which is far too limiting.
• Visually demote uploading (important, but secondary)

[ewinslow]

@PerJensen

[PerJensen]

Here is a draft with a few ideas, what do you think.

Featured plugins could be the most recommended or maybe we could add a new way to rate.

[ewinslow]

I think we need something that automatically demotes older votes. Like most downloaded in the last year, not for all time as we currently have.

To me, downloads is more accurate than recommendations as an estimate of usefulness or popularity because you don't have to remind people to do it and it isn't limited to logged in users.

I like this but feel that it could be simplified even further. Let's put even more focus on the main action (search) by moving the filters to the sidebar. That way we have search in the middle and then filtering by category or Elgg version is a more advanced thing. We only have 2000 items to search through so it shouldn't be hard to narrow down to just the right one! Default sort by number of downloads.