What Should 2011 Hold for WordPress?

As a follow-up to the general “improve photo gallery” suggestions, one specific thing I’d love to see would be a way to use the gallery shortcode to construct a gallery page, which has a thumbnail/link for each post/page with associated galleries displayed with the gallery shortcode. It would probably help to have a built-in function call “except for [post id], [post id].”

Other than the gallery improvement, a big +1 to several ideas already mentioned:

More intuitive menu system
Integrated user photo/gravatar – either local override or nice Gravatar integration
SQL efficiency/page speed optimization
Integrating Subscribe to Comments into core
Built in mobile support

• Allowing posts and pages to be updated at a specific time would be a fantastic feature. At the moment of course, one has to login to the system at the time you want it to go live to update which is a bit of a pain.
• Easier setup for WordPress Networks. Could we try to eliminate the need to add code, etc?

These are a couple of ideas I’d like to see to make WordPress easier to use.

As a end user (although one who is also a programmer) I would be upset to see akismet leave the core, but do agree that Hello Dolly should be removed.

Dropping IE6 Support seams like a sensible move, the more streamlined the end product can be the better and IE6 support prevents the use of CSS3.

I would love to see some meetups in the southern UK, just to meet some more WP devs.

• Exclude functions (example: revisons) to Core plugins
• Standardize how plugins deal with settings and navigation
• Drop PHP4 Support
• Better localization support, to many memory and use php-standard functions for localization (this reduce the memory with PHP5)
• Page speed optimizaton (filter rewrite rules)
• n to n relationship for attachments
• Make the admin more easily themable
• Move Akismet and Hello Dolly out of the core package
• Kill all inline-css-styles

• Grandchild Themes – A lot of theme frameworks offer child themes already. Adding personal customizations to these can be problematic if they’re ever updated by the original author, returning us to the same problem we had when hacking standard themes. Adding advanced (iterative) theme inheritance would allow for child-child themes (parent theme is the framework, child theme defines the general styling/behavior, grandchild theme adds unique customizations).
• Plug-in Framework Support – As it stands, loading a plug-in framework requires include()ing an external class file and hoping that no other developer is using a different version of the framework. But installing a framework as a separate plug-in is a hassle for end users. I’d like to see a separate system within WordPress for loading, activating, and managing common frameworks that plug-ins can hook into. This would make 3rd party code more collaborative without lots of class my_Framework and class my_other_Framework and class my_Framework_2 floating around when upgrading one instance can/should upgrade them all.

I’d really love to see an overhaul for www.ads-software.com as a whole.

Specifically within www.ads-software.com, I’d like to see:

• Better moderation and possibly even quality testing around plugins and/or themes

The reason for this is that it’s a great resource to begin with, but it could be so much better if there were some more guidelines around it.

Specifically involving commercial plugins, SEO link spammming, and ensuring that each plugin won’t harm a user’s installation.

Keep up the great work everyone!
Goooo team WordPress! #rock #2011

I would add a 1 to adding a child theme directory, rather than adding to the existing directory, there are a number of frameworks supporting child themes, so a catogorized directory.

Working with twenty ten and promoting child themes there are some things that cannot be switched off, custom backgrounds and headers need a remove call.

The post meta it would be good if different parts could be easy switched off, like tags.

Last on the theme, instead of hard coding the headers a function that looks in the folder and adds the headers to the selection, this will save people from messing with the code.

Not sure if this is what you mean, but these are just observations working with the themes, and not complaints.

Regards

David

Allow easier customisation the WYSIWYG-editor.

One solution is to define a stylesheet from which all classes are pulled into the paragraph styles dropdown? (Some plugins do this already.)

It would also be great if the editor reflects the styles, or clearly indicates which class is assigned to any particular paragraph.

• Core plugins
• Unit-tests cleanups and improvements
• More progressive enhancement with CSS3/JS/HTML5 where possible
• Media
• Documentation (API reference) + handbooks

The admin page list view also needs a cleanup, so that parent/child relationships are more clear, and page hierarchies are easier to manage.

The alternating row colours create more confusion than clarity, when they work independently of the hierarchy.

The usability for content editing on WordPress is very poor. Not surprising for a blogging platform, but my interest is in websites where blogging is an option, so CMS is primary and I’m coming from that direction.

WordPress needs an in depth review of usability for content management. But to be honest, even very basic things are in my opinion dismal. I don’t have time to put together a list right now, but getting to pages for editing, and the editing UI itself is terrible.

There isn’t undo. The allocation of screen real estate makes editing a page feel like I’m using an iPhone. Scrolling doesn’t work (page up/down frequently scrolls the page instead of the edit window). Accessing pages on even a small site is horrendously longwinded (again exacerbated by poor use of screen real estate – i.e. not showing many pages in the page list). These are just a few things that spring to mind, and are very basic.

I am committed to WordPress. Its a great platform and I will work with you guys when I have time to compile a more constructive review and suggestions for usability improvements, but right now don’t have the time.

The purpose of this post is to highlight this weakest of all aspects of WordPress. It is where other systems will gain an advantage if it is not addressed rapidly enough so I hope I’m not alone in identifying the issue, and that there are folks who understand usability a lot better than seems to have been the case so far. Its normal.

Usability is generally very poorly understood and implemented. So this does also present an opportunity for WordPress. This system has many killer features in other areas. Get it to the leading edge on usability and it will be untouchable!

With WordPress love,

Mark (in London)

For years I have wanted a way to have a post template drop down menu. So when you start a new post you can click on a drop down menu to have the post filled with text, images, etc from a template you set up in advance. This would be a god send for those of us who make regular posts based on a format every week. An option to save a post as a template, and the ability to either delete and/or edit post templates would also be needed.

@thewebalyst: I would suggest you join the UI group at make.www.ads-software.com/ui to provide specific UI feedback. A couple of notes, though:
– In the visual editor, there is an undo button.
– You can re-allocate the screen real estate using drag and drop and/or the screen options tab.
– You can change how many pages are listed by changing the number in the screen options tab.

Related to Lance’s comment about widgets, I would be over the moon if we made it so widgets were easier for people to use for stored content, like from a specific category/post type that stays out of the regular post loop.

• A significant simplification (e.g., with some built-in, ready-to-go GUI/front-end elements) of the functions.php protocol for creating, and CPT-associating, Custom Fields meta boxes, of various types. Right now it’s so easy, and so lean, to hand-register Custom Post Types and Custom Taxonomies. The third piece of that WordPress-as-CMS trinity — meta keys/values — are still too prohibitively verbose & cumbersome to write, practically, without the help of a Plugin (like Verve or MagicFields). At the end of the day, no one’s using CPTs without also the need to throw at least one (or twenty) custom fields at it, too. Custom Taxes can only cover so much.
• An oldie but a goodie: The out-of-the-box ability to assign arbitrary one-to-many Post (of any Post Type) relationships. The table infrastructure is so close, and the stopgap Plugins that fake it now are so thin. It’s the one missing piece that makes WP-to-clients evangelism so….tricky.
• Not a request, but a comment: You guys are the best. Thank you for keeping this rolling so intentionally.