[wp-testers] There is no ID when we manage Post, Pages and Categories

[Jennifer Hodgdon]

Matt Mullenweg wrote:
> Peter Westwood wrote:
>> thinking about this some more maybe the correct approach is to 
>> encourage theme authors to not use template tag calls based on ID's 
>> but to write them using slugs instead.
> 
> That should be trivial to add to the fall-through in 
> get_category_template().

You mean making the category template file name be 
"category_my_cat_slug.php" instead of "category_3.php", e.g.?

I'm not sure that would work all that well. For instance, % signs 
(created in slugs by default by WordPress when Chinese-type languages 
are encountered) are not great in file names. Also, while ID numbers 
are not changed once the category/post/page is created, slugs can 
easily be edited, and then the theme file name wouldn't match the 
category any more.

Also, are you going to make sure that slugs are visible in the admin 
interface, if you have to know them to put into theme files? If 
they're not visible, it's even harder to find them than hovering the 
mouse -- you'd have to click the Edit link to see the slug. Even worse 
for the case of posts/pages, where the slug isn't even really a 
standard field any more in 2.5, but just a special area where the URL 
is displayed. Which would be even more annoying than the current 
situation with IDs, where you have to hover the mouse to find them.

So I still vote for having the IDs visible somewhere on the Manage 
screens. They won't take up as much space as slugs would, and it would 
be (I think) a lot of work to make all the theme functions that 
currently take IDs work with slugs. Certainly a big change to put in 
before 2.5 goes out the door.

     Jennifer

-- 
Jennifer Hodgdon * Poplar ProductivityWare
www.poplarware.com

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