[wp-hackers] Re: Template revisioning system for WordPress

[Muthuswamy]

wp-hackers-request at lists.automattic.com wrote:
> Re: Template revisioning system for WordPress
I made some ideas for GSOC wordpress. But my I was not able to submit my 
application to GSOC on time. I think these ideas can help the community 
to build my idea into a final project. I am also interested in doing 
this project, so if you wish we can work together.

Detailed Proposal:
--------------------------
Wordpress theme editor has been a mere text editor with no special 
features built in it. This project proposal is to provide improvements 
to the default Wordpress theme editor and add some usable functionality 
that can help theme developers.

1. Theme Files Tree View:
Current theme editor just skips the sub-folders inside the themes 
folder, so editing these files from the admin panel is not possible. 
This project is going to include all the html, php, css, javascript 
files inside the themes folder in any level of folder the files is in. 
This can be achieved by adding a modified file navigation tree, 
replacing the traditional system.

2. Theme Versioning System:
Similar to the post versioning system, the theme editor will also get a 
versioning system where the revisions of the files are stored in a 
separate folder like: 
wp-content/themes/theme-revisions/<themename>/<subfolder>/<date>.<time>.<filename>.<extension>

Here we do not require any database related functions as the list of 
revisions are got from scanning the file system and displayed under the 
theme editor for respective files. This will allow the user to easily 
manage the revisions for the specific file.
The user can also select specific revisions of file to create new set of 
theme right from the admin panel and test the new theme without 
affecting the current theme files.

The versioning system also holds the copy of the current file so even if 
the user changes the file through FTP, the theme system can identify 
changes and save the copy of new revision in the respective theme 
revisions folder. This method can be achieved by invoking versioning 
functions when the user enters the Wordpress admin dashboard(fake cron).
If the user require, autosave option can also be enabled. But this will 
disabled by default as it can create too many unwanted revisions.

I hope this will help in some way.

Regards,
Muthuswamy K.