[wp-hackers] 1.5.2 or on to 1.6?

[David House]

On 5/22/05, Mark Jaquith <mark.wordpress at txfx.net> wrote:
 >  - mod_rewrite defaults
>  A lot of people have problems making mod_rewrite rules because they choose
> a permalink structure that doesn't make sense, or that is poorly supported
> between different mod_rewrite implementations.  Category-based permalinks
> are especially troubling.  So for this reason, I think we should offer,
> instead of just a blank box, a list of maybe 3 or 4 "known good presets."

Agreed. Even if we make it so that WordPress can understand every
unique permalink configuration under the sun, it still holds that some
structures are better than others. I think we should give three or
four suggested ones, and allow users to make their own up, as you've
said.

>  - plugin hooks
>  More hooks, please!  We should have a plugin hook brainstorming session.  I
> never want to have to hack WordPress core again, and I want to minimize the
> number of functions that I have to copy, rename, and modify.  Every time
> someone says "Hm, if I had a hook here, I could do X," we should consider
> adding a hook.

Agreed.

>  - "submit draft only" authors
>  I can think of lots of cool uses for this functionality, such as blogs that
> allow guest posters without having to explicitly choose authors ahead of
> time.  We need things to be as streamlined and easy as possible for this
> use.  We need better management and presentation of "please approve" drafts.

We do this already. Level 1 users can only submit drafts.
  
>  - echo/return/return-style
>  We've made a lot of progress with making sure that functions can echo as
> well as return.  We need to keep this going, as well as making sure that we
> offer ways to return the requested data as an array of objects.  Things like
> this will save plugin developers a lot of time and frustration.

Yep.
 
>  - get_currentuserinfo()
>  This is uuuugly.  It's a function that you just call, and it populates a
> bunch of global variables.  I want to do stuff like  <?php if
> (wp_user_level() > 5 && wp_user_login() != 'admin') : ?> and stuff like
> that.  This business of "did I call get_currentuserinfo()?  Are the
> variables I need declared global? is quite annoying.  Maybe there's a better
> way to do this, but I sure haven't seen anyone using it...

Definately.
 
> - Theme Installation
>  I think we should at least consider creating a way for themes to be
> download/installed from within WordPress (or interfacing between the themes
> site and WordPress).  It would be really cool if you could choose from maybe
> 10 themes immediate after install! (not my idea... props to whoever
> suggested this).

Yeah - it'd be really nice if we could have an official themes
repository that we could RPC from inside WP, or if that sounds like
too much work, bundle at least five themes with WP.

> - Optimization
>  Ryan Boren did some excellent work on improving WordPress' caching, and we
> should be on the lookout for code that could be improved thusly.  There
> shouldn't be any redundant queries or two queries when one could do the job.

Yes. WordPress running 10+ queries per request is still too many in my eyes.

On 5/22/05, Mike Little <journalized at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd like people to consider an automated formal testing setup for
> Wordpress. I'm specifically thinking of the xUnit unit testing
> frameworks. Has anyone had any experience of phpUnit [1]?. I'm using
> jUnit for Java everyday at work and it makes a huge difference to
> quality and speed of development.
> It would be great to have a suite of automated tests that could be run
> which would verify all the core functionality before every release.

Unit testing, and especially PHPUnit, only tends to work with
object-orientated software. However, that doesn't mean that we should
abandon this idea -- I think the idea of a more object-orientated WP
is a great one, and a formal testing suite to go with it would be
brilliant.

The other thing I suggest for the next version of WP is a formal
release schedule, so we know when bug-fixing becomes a priority, when
we're going into feature-freeze, and when the big day will be. This
could avoid squabbling like that over restore [1].

[1]: http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-hackers/2005-April/000666.html
 
-- 
-David House, dmhouse at gmail.com, http://xmouse.ithium.net