What Should 2011 Hold for WordPress?

I can’t imagine how hard it must be for the core WP developers to decide on new features. Just about everyone wants a new feature or something removed. Even minor changes can affect or break WordPress for tons of users depending on how they are using it.

I’ve just spent the last 3 months developing a major site on WP (Skatter Tech). I felt the experience was great, a few things were undocumented, but no major issues aside from that.

As for my thoughts for WP in 2011:

• HTML5 and CSS3 – While not all browsers support this entirely and although the specifications haven’t been standardized, there are MANY things that are 100% compatible and ready for use. I think the TwentyTen default theme and the Dashboard should start transitioning over carefully.
• Improve Search – Many people are using Google’s Search API as an alternative because the native search is fairly poor. It may get the job done if you only have a few articles, however there’s no ‘relevance factor’ in ranking results. Even some basic improvements to the algorithm would go a long way.
• Bundled Plugins – Akismet is an amazing plugin and I use/pay for it. However, that’s only because I use WP for the purpose of being a ‘publishing platform’ for my publication. WordPress is moving from Blog->CMS (right?). If so, commenting on many installs aren’t necessarily enabled or even visible (e.g. restaurant website). As for Hello Dolly, keep it. Why? It may serve no practical purpose, but it feels like a part of WordPress culture. It’s not bulky and it’s easy for users to remove. Keeping at least one plugin as an example is a good idea.
• Gravatar – Like Akismet, I’m also a fan and a user of this service as well. However, it feels like Akismet/Gravatar are the only two external/third-party service inside of WordPress. I’m not suggesting the removal in anyway. However, I think some major companies that may want to use WordPress might not want to rely on another service. I agree with the suggestion to implement ‘local user avatars’ to reduce dependence on Gravatar.
• Increased Security and Keeping Slim – I’m sure these are always a given no-brainier, but just mentioning it again.

Once again would like to say that WordPress is a phenomenal platform and the developers who I’ve been bugging over the past few months have been amazingly helpful. (And that’s coming from a guy who was an intern at Six Apart, which was an awesome company as well.)

P.S. My current dream-WP feature? Live collaborative editing, Google Docs style! I wish I could completely say goodbye to MS Word. After the Deadline is already a better spell checker in my opinion.

+1 to better search, media handling, and moving links to custom post types. I’d love it if my WordPress instance could fully replace my Flickr and delicious accounts.

Another thumbs up for 3.2 being the “All About Media” release. This has been on the wishlist for many for a long time and keeps getting put on the backburner. A revamp of media could easily take up a full release.

Some wishes:

Drag and drop pictures into the edit window to upload images. Google has this in gmail and most of their google apps, it is becoming a standard for html5 apps.

Drag and drop to re position images in the post Visual window. Exactly like you can do in Pages for iPad (see video). I’m not even sure if this is possible and what problems this presents, but it would be awesome. Or at least improve word wrapping options with images.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsj6E_D6Ui0=02m09s (at 2mins and 9secs)

Make the image edit options like crop, rotate, flip horizontally/vertically accessible from within the post window instead of going to media library. Most people will upload and edit images from within the post, and wont go to the media library.

Should be able to insert an image into a post and set it as the post thumbnail in the one step. Currently you have to insert the image then go and choose this as a post thumbnail.

Make the Visual window more wysiwyg:

wysigyg editor should recognise returns as paragraphs and recognise multiple returns to leave spaces between sections in the post.

I would like better widget placement. Instead of side bars. Why not before and after content. When I use a widget I use it as part of the site Im not streaming some score from some team that clearly looks like a widget they really have a meaning like a news letter. So If it could be made more available through out the site that be great. I now you may say a designer can do this but I think it should be part of wp. This would be great for static pages to.

PLUGINS:
1.a) Theme frameworks and plug-ins are a major component of WordPress now. So as much as I hate “standards”, I think a significant effort regarding plug-in standards, minimum support requirements, etc. is required.
1.b) Standardize how plug-ins deal with settings and navigation.
2.) MUCH better “Search” on https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins.
3.) Make media features better.

A would set the goal to make WordPress evolve against both a very lightweight, but extensible, blogging platform for starters, and up to a full CMS.

• Taxonomy meta table to support storing taxonomy custom fields
• Links as post type
• N-to-n relationships between sub-level and top-level post types

• Post types ‘post’ and ‘page’ are, and any custom post type may be top-level
• Post types ‘attachment’ and ‘link’ are, and any custom post type may be sub-level

• Add links to posts from repository of external links, or internal links to sub-level posts or other posts (siblings), in the same way as adding media, just simpler
• Bundeled plugins, some default activated, some not

• Pages (activated)
• Links (activated)
• User management (deactivated)
• Custom fields (deactivated)
• Revisions (deactivated)
• Remote management (deactivated)
• Multisite (deactivated)

• Bundeled plugin revisions should offer to delete all revisions older than a certain age, from dashboard
• Bundeled user management plugin should offer a way of communication between users, a log of recent post updates and author internal comments
• Widgets showing post (any type) content, filtered by taxonomy term (this exists as plugins, but may go into core or a bundeled plugin)
• Quality/trusted plugins, tested by merited developers, to meet a set of technical standards
• Focus on code cleanup and removal of things not needed for PHP 5, very old MySQL and very old browsers
• No support for IE6
• Require PHP 5.2 or higher

• Simple Form creator – Contact or etc.
• Custom Permalinks for Custom Post/Content Type
• Media Upload

• Ability choose custom folder
• Ability to extend folders to Year->Month->Date
• Ability to create new size of image for selected image(s)
• Ability to insert multiple images

Plenty of good suggestions already out, but here’s my two cents:

1. Standardization of conditional tags for CPTs, custom taxonomies, and meta fields to coincide with the ‘standard’ conditionals. Example: using is_post_type(‘book’)= instead of if( get_post_type() == ‘book’ ) …
2. Improved meta field additions (possibly add the ‘default’ fields into core?
3. Ability to easily remove sections from admin panel (i.e. links, etc)
4. Built in backup (scheduled) functionality? Either with core plugin or core.

Ability to completely customize the branding of back end. For e.g. removing all references of WP.

I know no one wants to do that but just in case if WP was used as a CMS for developing a site for some client and we do not want the client to know the platform used.

One of my most important things: better interface for plugins.

Visually two things that spring to mine are icons and custom headers for plugins in the directory.

Changelog support in the updater — what’s new is version X.X and why should I upgrade? (We could probably stand to do this for our own updater.)

When a plugin fails to activate because of a fatal error that should auto-report back to WP.org and register in that plugin’s compatibility, so we get better data from beta testers.

Search: what are people looking for, and are they finding it?

A better way for beta and RC testers to report plugin compatibility so as a community we can find and update any stragglers before a major release.

My wishlist:

• Language packs for core, plugins, themes – so that the translations are independently installable from the code
• More and better test suite – run automatically on check-ins
• Make it even easier to report bugs – e.g. a plugin which adds built-in bug reporting functionality for beta testers
• Make it easier for a community of people to work together a develop a plugin

+1 for “Taxonomy meta table to support storing taxonomy custom fields” by @dhyanji

Changelog support in the updater — what’s new is version X.X and why should I upgrade? (We could probably stand to do this for our own updater.)

big plus 1 for me, I tried to adapt someone else’s only to end up doing my own version. I do a what’s changed since installed version, and add it into the plugins screen in small scrollable div to save on screen space.

When a plugin fails to activate because of a fatal error that should auto-report back to WP.org and register in that plugin’s compatibility, so we get better data from beta testers.

Seriously? please no. Only and if there is a method for it to be turned off. Or there will be a lot of false reporting from plugins being developed. (perhaps turn off the reporting if WP_DEBUG is active).

oops apologies, shouldn’t be discussing methods here.

Ok, Amtssprache scheint hier englisch zu sein – hmmm… mir egal…
In einer der früheren WordPress-Versionen gab es eine Quick-Edit-Zeile an die Oberseite des Blogs angeheftet.

Diese war nur für denjenigen sichtbar, der auch angemeldet war. Das hat mir damals das Platzieren der META-Funktion in der Sidebar und die st?ndige Eingabe des Zusatzes wp-admin erspart.

Eine Reinkarnation w?re cool!

Danke

[Google translation added by elfin]
Ok, the official language here seems to be English – hmmm … I do not care …
In an earlier WordPress versions, it was a quick-edit line at the top of the blog attached.

This was visible only to that which were also registered. That gave me time to place the META-function in the sidebar and the constant input of the addition wp-admin saves.

A reincarnation would be cool!

Thanks

• XML Sitemap for video, images, pages divided by month included by a Sitemap_index file cause it’s a very big problem for high volume content website.
• Some easy way to integrate form posting from frontend
• Making possible to choice a lightweight Admin panel
• Better handling of simultaneous posts from differents users in admin.