[wp-hackers] Idea: Widgets as custom post types

[Doug Stewart]

On 3/5/10, Mike Schinkel <mikeschinkel at newclarity.net> wrote:
> What exactly is being proposed?  Storing the widget *class* (i.e. the
> information about a text widget) or storing the widget *instance* (i.e. the
> text that the text widget will display)?
>
> If the former then yes the wp_posts table is the wrong place.  If the latter
> then the wp_posts table is the right place because widget instances present
> content. And while the text widget is obvious other widgets are just as much
> content as text widgets.  If I have a list of events pulled from an API, for
> example, that list of events is content even though dynamically generated.
>
> So my vote is that widgets should go into wp_posts because they are content.
>
> -Mike
> P.S. This begs a larger question of dynamically generated content, which
> many widgets produce.  Pages with dynamically generated content are also
> content yet they don't show up when searched.  So the question grows to
> become how to you recognize dynamically generated content in searches
> because people searching don't care how content is generated.
>

Clearly we need to begin supporting Couch/MongoDB in WordPress core
and simply throw documents over the JSON wall.  wp_mapreduce(), here
we come!

(I keed! I keed!)

-- 
-Doug