[wp-docs] Developer doc to dos

[Lorelle VanFossen]

Excellent list. Fantastic. I'm whelmed. And thrilled!

Here are my thoughts.

* The Loop - What did you have in mind for this? We have two articles on 
the WordPress Loop. One is written as a basic technical explanation and 
the other "Loop in Action" was written for the WordPress Lessons for a 
step-by-step look at how to customize the loop for different needs. I'd 
love to see more custom features for using the Loop in separate articles 
related to blog models and their specific needs, as well as these two 
articles updated.

* Conditional Tags/Includes - I'd love to see a "Conditional Tags in 
Action" WordPress Lesson-style article that uses the conditional tags 
and includes in various methods, expanding upon the basic technical how 
to. The Conditional Tags article is really lacking in quality examples, 
but it doesn't need to do everything. A WordPress Lesson can add more 
features. It also needs to be edited and updated as it is not clear on 
how it works within the code examples.

* Hacking WordPress - WordPress Plugins have pretty much totally 
replaced hacks. So we need to be sure how we are going to go forth in 
the future with the issue of "hacking" WordPress while still being very 
clear that modifications to the core programming is NOT recommended, and 
potentially dangerous with the new frequency of upgrades coming out 
faster than ever. What's the current policy?

* Hardening WordPress - This is really, really controversial. I know 
it's not on your list, but security topics are and this is one of them. 
We need to clearly address the issue of security flaws and potential 
risks in WordPress, especially in WordPress Plugins, while not exposing 
flaws or potential "back doors" into WordPress. This is a big one and we 
really need to get a consensus and policy on how to write about this 
because it is SO important, while not opening a door we don't want open.

Additional Articles

I'd also like to recommend you include a few other articles to that list 
that are on the Task List

* http://codex.wordpress.org/Codex:Tasks#Common_WordPress_Errors We 
really need a better listing of the most common WordPress errors with 
tips on how to fix them such as errors during installation, mysql 
errors, plugins not found errors...we need examples of what it looks 
like when the error occurs as people often don't have the words or 
language to describe the error, and then how to fix it. This would be 
excellent as a reference for the Support Forum.

* http://codex.wordpress.org/Codex:Tasks#Foreign_Language_Characters - I 
don't know how "developer" this is, or if I should hand it off to 
someone on polygots, but we need some articles on handling foreign 
language characters in WordPress. WordPress now works well with 
right-to-left languages, but we need some technical articles on foreign 
language techniques. Recent surveys are indicating a huge demand in 
Japanese, Chinese, and other Asian blogs, so we need coverage in English 
on that so it can be translated by those support groups. Interested?

* http://codex.wordpress.org/Codex:Tasks#Custom_PHP_Queries - I see that 
David House signed up for this. Any idea if he is still working on an 
article for custom PHP queries? Maybe we can get Kaf to work on this or 
help.

* Do's and Don'ts for WordPress Plugins - I'd love to see a very 
specific do's and don'ts for WordPress Plugin writers. I found some 
articles on Head Zoo ( 
http://headzoo.com/tutorials/writing-a-wordpress-plugin and 
http://headzoo.com/tutorials/wordpress-plugin-tips-and-tricks ) that may 
be worth approaching the author for editing and inclusion in the Codex - 
or using some of the offerings for a new article. We really need some 
WordPress Lessons to help beginners learn to write WordPress Plugins as 
well as technical articles. It is the hottest growing area and we need 
to create some very strong standards and offer articles on how to avoid 
security holes, another big ickie.

I haven't been through the Forum looking for article ideas for a while. 
Have you gone through the Advanced area to look for what is hot and the 
most popular technical topics brought up? This is our best tool for 
determining what we need in the Codex. It's critically important that 
the support volunteers have something to point to for redundant topics.

Great work and I'm so excited to get this area worked on. It is much overdo!

Lorelle