What Should 2011 Hold for WordPress?

A big +1 to leesalazar’s comments above.

Developer-oriented features get added regularly, usually before most of us recognize the need for them, which is great. But the Editor UI is a pain point for most regular users.

1. Full-screen visual editor is a good step, but not perfect. And it would really be nice to have an expandable html editor area.
2. Discuss adding some of the features from TinyMCE Advanced into core.
3. Allow defining of image intermediate sizes by post type.

I’d really appreciate it if you took yourself at least half a year off in order to fix all the bugs which remain in the core since the first versions and to clean up the code. This is not meant bad, but sometimes I wonder why WordPress is evolving so fast and at the same time so unsustainable.

What I’d really like to see is a new theme-related function:

add_custom_footer

… (similar to add_custom_image_header and add_custom_background) to provide a Footer submenu under the Appearance menu containing the facility to specify a footer background image or color, and text/markup!

As others have suggested, I’d also like the option to automatically add child pages to menus!

I’d like WordPress to be seen to be a true CMS, not just a blogging tool. To that end, I’d like the Reading Settings to default to the Static page with a Front Page and News Page

Thanks to you all!

Generelly good suggestion above – it’s going to be a tough 2011 ??

My suggestions can be implemented in minutes… From a ‘normalisation‘ and UI point of view I’ll suggest to change the naming redundancy of child pages in the admin panel. E.g. under Post it says Post instead of Edit, General, Overview or likewise. I’ve counted 7 of these ‘mistakes’ since the title together with the action, e.g. ‘Add new’, should tell what is possible to do for the user and not ‘Post – Post’ or ‘Links – Links’ which is meaningless.

Also under Post it says ‘Categories’ and ‘Post Tags’? Two different approaches? Why not ‘Post Categories’ or just ‘Tags’? In that sense the wording is consequent.

First of all thank you for everything you guys worked on so far. Can’t even imagine my life without WordPress.

Plugins

• Disable all plugins that are not compatible with at least 3.0 version of WordPress.
• Search suggestions if there is no match for the plugin user searched for.
• Plugin submission – Default language must be English, if there’s an option for more languages great.

Themes

• Disable all themes that are not compatible with at least 3.0 version of WordPress.
• More stricter standard while submitting free themes, one of them should be cross-browser compatibility. I’ve seen themes working great in IE and complete mess in Firefox or Chrome or vice-versa.
• Add Child Themes directory.

WordPress

• Eliminate IE6 support
• Minimum requirements for PHP (5.x.x)
• SEO META built-in

@ztstar

2. built in flexibility to utilize 1,2, or 3 columns on a page or post

This is done via theme, many themes nowadays will have this built-in.

Cheers,
Emil

+2 – Integrated mobile support; it would be great if theme developers included mobile versions with themes.

+2 – Improved Plugin Directory; I’d like to be able to filter search results by WP version compatibility, and would love to see plugin name under FYI section. Like the idea of some kind of certification (incompatibilities are a pain). Wish obsolete plugins were removed from directory.

+1 – Better search. Integrated SEO. Save widgets.

+1 – Better WYSIWYG editor; Twenty Ten started on WYSIWYRG (what you really get), but can there be an easier way to integrate theme styles (including custom)?

+1 – Media UI; when inserting media from the library in a post/page, it would be great to have a field for a destination URL.

So many people mention user admin. Why not offer (or partner with) a CMS platform for web professionals to use on client sites? (Something like PageLime?)

I wonder if WordPress would ever consider offering a managed hosted WP package? To take care of the backend stuff like security and updates. With a focus on non-techie end users. With integration of select (certified?) business/media/social apps/plugins, and a super-simple editor. (Something like what Adobe Business Catalyst or Webiva are trying to do.) Designers would love this. Make it affordable for small businesses. Generate revenue for yourselves.

additional thoughts to my previous suggestion

• Option to clear all/selected the revision history of the posts
• One repository site for all plugins instead of different plugin developers site with the msg of wp approved/tested, version compatibility, developer support etc etc

? ????? ??????? ?????? ?????? ? May all the beings in all the worlds be happy. ||

• Extra content blocks per post, next to the content of the post. There is a plugin for this. but post content should not be dependant of a plugin to exist or not. Furthermore I think this is core stuff for a cms.
• Basic pagination should be part of the core, including pagination by week, month and year.
• Drag en drop ordering of pages.
• Better menu/section system.
• Custom upload directory with options just like the permalink structures. There is a plugin for this, but I feel this is easy to make part of the core.
• Better search options and display
• Captcha option as part of the options on the comments page

* php5
** stop php4 support
** Go to wp 3.2. Go directly to wp 3.2. Do not pass wp 3.1.1, …
** new dev rule : stop ending php files with ?>
** more object oriented programming in wordpress (api’s, classes)
** code clean up (drop all those php4 stuff)

* make pluggable/filterable the multisite/”wpmu” mails (#15594)

* have a planning for wp versions to release in this year
++ for developpers
** 2011/01 wp 3.1
** 2011/04 wp 3.2
** 2011/10 wp 3.x
** 2012/01 wp 3.y
++ for deciders
** 2011/02 what will be in wp 3.2 ?
** 2011/05 what will be in wp 3.x ?
** 2011/11 what will be in wp 3.y ?

This is probably all repeated, but I’ll chuck in ma penneth ??
– Can Media section be replaced using Custom Post Type?
– Many-many wp_posts relationships
– Switch from svn to git
– Expand on theme and plugin parentage
– Better user profile management. Strip out everything except core requirements and allow plugins/themes to expand into whatever is needed. These can then be incorporated into core later, if needed.
– More search hook availability.
– Development tools (e.g. approved framework list, unit testing) for themes and plugins

Interesting thread. Here are some of my thoughts (in no particular order, and avoiding certain pet peeves about which I’ve voiced my opinion sufficiently):

1. Uninstall hook for Themes, as per the Plugin uninstall hook
2. Relative internal linking
3. bbPress Plugin
4. More advanced Media Management (see e.g.: NextGen Gallery plugin)
5. Bulk media import (see e.g.: Add From Server plugin)
6. Consider Grandchild Themes, or clarify/emphasize proper use of Child Themes. Support Child Themes in the www.remarpro.com Theme Repository only if Grandchild Themes are implemented; otherwise, Child Themes must be preserved for use by end users.
7. Support Theme Frameworks in the www.remarpro.com Theme Repository.
8. Begin review of WordPress terminology and naming conventions, and create roadmap/timeline for improving. (e.g. “Custom Post Type”: not a *post* at all. Should be “Custom Content Type”. Likewise with template tags, function names, etc.)

There’s probably more, but that’s enough for now.

I would like to see more features for multisite installations, including:

1 Multisite query_posts and permalink shortcodes in between sites (without having to use switch_to_blog)

2. Multisite comments all in one place

I would also like the code to be able to see where embeds and theme files are not XHTML valid and either instruct an admin how to change it to being valid or doing it automatically.

I really do love WordPress, and I think it has done more for the economy (and jobs!) than anything the government has tried to do. Thank all of you who work on the core.

+1 to the following (all previously mentioned):

• An “All About Media” update is a great idea… but still have easy ways to turn new/existing admin features on/off…this goes along with whoever suggested allowing a way to to strip down the Admin area for end-users that only need to deal with the basics (Pages/Posts)
• A “WordPress Lite” download option to get a simple blog up and running without all the bloat of a full WordPress install
• A local avatar Gravatar override for users that don’t want to rely on outside service
• Support for Grandchild themes because Frameworks are serving as the Parent themes these days, and Child themes end up being the starting point for customization…

I would like to see everyone in the WordPress community have a healthy, happy and prosperous 2011. Could you get that into the pipeline asap? ??

As for me, I would LOVE to see custom write panels in core!

The ability to configure various types of fields and assign them to post types (post, page, custom) would be out of this world. For me, this is the missing link to make WordPress a better CMS. It’s one of the few features that Drupal (CCK) and a few other CMS packages have over WordPress.

Sure we can build them by hand, or use a plug-in, but each of these solutions has shortcomings.

Aside from that, I would like to see the Plug-in Repository include more search options esp version compatibility.