[wp-hackers] User Feedback and Testing

[Ryan Boren]

On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 14:43 -0500, Owen Winkler wrote:
> First, we need to discover what the users want WordPress to do, and 
> perhaps what users will want WordPress to do in the future.  Then decide 
> on features to implement those requirements.  Code those features. 
> Provide enough time for testing of those features, while instituting a 
> support structure for it.  Getting thorough bug testing is only a part 
> of a development plan.
> 
> I think these initial ideas about how to go about instituting better bug 
> testing are pretty good, and we should follow through on them.  But we 
> should do this as part of an overall development plan, not just 
> something we slap onto whatever output the project ends up producing. 
> I'm sure that a dedicated testing group would rather test bugs on 
> features that they would want to have for themselves, and would produce 
> better reports as a result.

The plan for 2.0 was to address three major user visible areas.  Two of
the most criticized aspects of WP were the user levels and image
uploading.  People griped about these all the time, and almost every
review of WP had those two things noted in the "Cons".  Improving them
was a priority.  The most requested new feature has long been a WYSYIWYG
editor.  This is a make or break item for many people.  So, those were
three areas of focus in 2.0.

Under the hood, the focus was on consolidating and modularizing code.
Lot's of stuff was moved into functions.  API was added for many backend
activities.  Much of this rework was for the benefit of importers, which
were another backend focus.  In prior releases, the importers were ugly
and difficult to author.  They had to do lots of heavy-lifting on their
own.  The new importers are much more compact and easier to understand.
There's not a single SELECT among them thanks to all of the new backend
API.

That was the development plan, such as it was.

Ryan