Written: December 28th 2009
For a long time I have been arguing that WordPress should be removing features and providing them as core plugins instead of loading up the core code. That's the way I like things; however, I understand that WordPress is a tool for the masses, and so more (as opposed to less) is indeed more in this case. If it did happen though, what would be the absolute minimum feature set that the core should be left with?
I've been trying to think around this for a few days now and it isn't a simple answer. Obviously you need to be able to type in a URL and get content, but must that content contain 'pages' or 'blog' functionality or both? You can have a website without a blog but can you have a blog without any 'pages' at all?
What about media management? Is that something that every web publishing tool must have, without exception?
How about the admin interface itself? User management probably needs to be built in to the underlying API but is a visual user interface necessary when you may choose to control any number of blogs from a central point and therefore never need an indiviual admin tool?
The admin area is a good example of functionality that you might want to separate from the core so you can switch it out for something else. With a plugin admin area you can choose the most feature laden and complex setup or a simple three button fisher price version depending on your intended use.
Keep in mind now that I am not actually suggesting that any functionality would be unavailable, simply that you would need to use a plugin to get it. Anything over and above the core would be optional.
So what features and functionality should be always on because it simply cannot be done without?
On December 30th 2009 08:47:22 Ryan (http://www.pixopoint.com) said:
Crude user management, posts, file uploader, editor (not wysiwyg though), comments and an admin panel.
As long as there is some sort taxonomy system in place, then pages could be added as a plugin along with everything else.
To be honest, I'm surprised WordPress hasn't gone down this route just to keep the likes of yourself happy. I wouldn't have thought creating a core software and then adding a giant whopping plugin in on top of it (perhaps bundled into core) would have been a problem or even a performance limiter and would have opened up the software to a much larger audience.
I guess that's part of why BackPress is being developed though, to give users who need something more customisable a stripped down system to work with.
On December 30th 2009 09:20:49 Andrew (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) said:
Interesting list, I was actually thinking of posts and pages the other way around, i.e. pages should be default and blog posts and add-in. Now I am thinking of making them both an add-in.
I generally agree with the rest, but I also think the admin panel should be a plugin so it can be easily switched, or removed, if desired.
As for WordPress, I'm not really that surprised. I think it would be very difficult to turn a tanker like WordPress round to a completely different way of working, even if people did agree, simply because adding features is fun, re-working existing features isn't. The users simply aren't asking for it.
On January 9th 2010 10:22:51 Ryan (http://pixopoint.com/) said:
Would it really be that hard to strip all that junk out of WordPress? Most of the system seems to be added via hooks at some point, so just pulling the blocks out and adding them back in would have been fairly straightforward I'd have thought.
I'm actually rebuilding the PixoPoint Menu plugin to work this way. I added in far too much bloat and now I'm having to extract it all out and hook it back in via modules for the plugin. It's a pain in the neck, but mainly because I didn't build to work that way from the beginning, whereas WordPress seems to have been built to work that way from the ground up.
Or maybe some of the larger chunks of code aren't added by hooks perhaps. I wouldn't know as I haven't delved that deep into the inner workings of the core of it.
On January 12th 2010 15:08:47 Ryan (http://pixopoint.com/) said:
I had some more thoughts on this issue and turned it into a forum topic over on the Tavern:
http://www.wptavern.com/forum/general-wordpress/1198-what-hell-backpress.html#post10962
On January 12th 2010 17:26:55 Andrew (http://www,arickmann.co.uk) said:
Thanks Ryan. I don't think WordPress is very modularised at all.
On January 13th 2010 06:15:03 Ferodynamics (http://www.ferodynamics.com/) said:
I'm wondering the same thing today. Got notice from my host I'm due to get overage. Well, I think the problem is I finally upgraded WP--because by my old calculations (before upgrade) I should be able to handle twice the traffic I'm getting now.
I swore I would never upgrade again. One thing led to another, can't remember the exact chain of events, but I had to upgrade. Anyway, the upgrade broke my database, comments, cut posts in half, etc. Some strange UTF-8 encoding problem, which required a mysqldump, and on and on, hours and hours of repairs to multiple sites.
Now I'm looking at the most necessary function "get_comments()" and it's full of cache code, it appears the cache is mandatory now and you either get "advanced" cache or cache.php, either way you're looking at lots of cache code.
I'm getting more into Twitter now, working on a way to integrate tweets, comments and some other secret stuff. So I'm slowly working to "export" my way out of WP with my own tools, and present everything using my own code. Won't have RSS support, hopefully that doesn't make much difference.
I remember you were talking about working on another blog platform and that's why I came here, I wanted to see what you were up to.
On January 13th 2010 12:16:24 Ryan (http://pixopoint.com/) said:
Andew - do you think it's possible for WordPress to be re-engineered to be modularised like this? If the core could be chopped up into chunks, it seems that some power users like yourself may find more of a use for WordPress.
On January 13th 2010 12:48:55 Andrew (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) said:
Ryan, it is definitely possible to do it but there are some issues with it.
The biggest is that to do it would be to redefine WordPress. Right now it is a publishing tool, to modularise it begins to move it toward being a platform or framework and that is a big decision to make.
When you think about the purpose of WordPress you also have to ask the question of what concrete benefits doing all that work would bring for the user given that it would put off a lot of things users might care much more about. It is a community after all.
I note however that one of the canonical plugins is intended to be an experiment in removing content to a plugin so perhaps it is already happening.
I can see the key benefit being the removal of just enough so that WordPress stays a web publishing tool but one that can be specialised to a task. I don't see it being worth taking it back so far that it becomes a framework though.
On January 13th 2010 12:52:12 Andrew (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) said:
Fero, I am working on a publishing platform. This blog runs on the rough prototype of it but it is a long way away from being ready, and what I do with it once I am happy I haven't yet decided.
At the moment I am using the development of it as a learning process to development my skills in pre-planning, i.e. UML, Design Patters, etc.
It may that once I've done that I will find that I come up with the same solutions as other platforms and decide to use one of those instead.
Already I understand Habari much better.
On January 13th 2010 18:12:32 Ferodynamics (http://www.ferodynamics.com/) said:
Let me know if, when you release it.
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