[wp-hackers] Simplicity in 2.next

[Robert Deaton]

A) Inline documentation, better documentation. Tutorials on getting
started with screencasts possibly (wasn't this discussed before?)

B) (Let the flames begin) Drop support for broken hosts and
environments. Have the installer do some safe mode checks, and if safe
mode is completely broken (like most setups of it are), set an option
that disables anything that might write to disk. This includes the
theme editors, the plugin editors, file uploading, caching, etc. There
comes a point where we're spending too much time working around broken
environments and not enough time actually working on adding and
updating features. 2.0 hit way above that mark in my opinion, and its
about time we move on.

Also in this category is dropping support for old MySQL versions, <
4.1, as their charset support is terrible, and is a cause of much
grief when moving around. Also, it may be smart for us to explicitly
declare a database charset as UTF-8 or similar, which will also help
cut down support requests.

C) Our own error controlling. Let's stop this now called "WSOD" mess
with our own error handling and logging, to make sure that context
appropriate error messages are displayed and that an admin is notified
when we are able to detect potentially serious problems. People are
coming to rely more and more upon the stability of WordPress, and each
horror story is a hit against potential users.

I'm sure I'll think of more soon.

--
--Robert Deaton
http://somethingunpredictable.com