What Do You Want to See in WordPress 2.8?

Nov 9, 2008 by Matt | Posted in WordPress 5 Comments

WordPress 2.7 will be shipping within the next couple weeks, bringing with it a variety of improvements and new features.

Now that it’s feature set is pretty much set in stone, let’s start talking about version 2.8. What kind of features do you want to see added to the core?

Some of the more popular major feature requests are

  • OpenID integration.
  • The ability to easily change the error page that shows when WordPress can’t connect to the database.
  • Better media management (coming in 2.8)

I wouldn’t mind seeing the OpenID, it might make it easier to leave comments on blogs, but I don’t want it to replace the URL field, a problem with current plugins, I’ve noticed. I’d also like to see WordPress’s hooks and template tags documented better.

What bothers you about WordPress? What’s should be added?

  • http://stevenclark.com.au Steven Clark

    Mmm interesting question Matt. I guess OpenID would be a logical one and media management is always going to be in there. Although I do wonder where feature creep ends with an application like WordPress, as opposed to feature enhancement. There’s a pretty well accepted notion in software development that the more features you add to something the more complexity that you add, so feature creep comes at an increasing cost over time… I think 37signals have written a bit about these new feature choices. It will be interesting over time to see where WordPress goes in terms of features, say in two to three years. Already it is much more complicated (in 2.6 anyway) to insert a simple image than it was in the original version, for example. More choices, greater complexity. That being said, geo-location is an area to move into… :)

  • http://www.webmaster-source.com Matt

    Steven, I agree. I don’t want WordPress to become too feature-laden. I want it to do what it needs to do, what the majority wants it to do, and then you have plugins to enhance it how you want it. I think there are plenty of existing things that need to be improved, or are only partially functional, etc. From a feature standpoint, WordPress is doing pretty well so far. However, some things, like media management, need overhauls. It’s not as easy to add an external image as it could be (I liked the old pre-2.6 Image dialog). Uploading could be a little smoother as well.

  • http://www.timelessinformation.com Armen Shirvanian

    I must say that WordPress has only small glitches that have been issues at any time.  The service is quite fulfilling for its field of usage.  I have had an issue where I couldn’t switch between visual and HTML mode when writing a post, but I have gotten used to it.  Quite a few individuals have been mentioning their early use of version 2.7, and some screenshots have shown that it is a bit more user-friendly.

  • http://creativeslice.com Tim Bowen

    You can already control the database connection error message.  Just add a file called ‘db-error.php’ in your ‘wp-content’ folder and put whatever HTML you’d like in that file.This is a feature WordPress added about a year ago.

  • http://www.webmaster-source.com Matt

    @Tim, Well thanks for that tip. I wasn’t aware they’d ever gotten around to adding that.