Every now and then I see someone ask in the dev channel how they can meet up with other local WordPress developers. We’re thinking about ways to make WordPress.org more of a resource to facilitate local connections, but in the meantime, I thought it might be helpful to publicize some upcoming WordCamps, the weekend conferences organized by local communities to talk about all things WordPress.
If any of these are within a reasonable distance to you, consider attending. WordCamps are a great way to meet other WordPress users, find collaborators, and expand your t-shirt collection*. I know I’ll be hitting at least a few of these; WordCamps are also a great way to get user feedback to take into consideration while we’re making decisions about what to include in core.
You can always find an up-to-date list of upcoming WordCamps at WordCamp Central. You can also try searching for WordPress groups at Meetup.com to find more regular monthly gatherings in your area.
*Most WordCamps include an event t-shirt in the registration fee.
The WordPress team had initially committed to maintaining the WordPress 2.0.x legacy branch until 2010. Unfortunately, we bit off more than we could chew—the 2.0.x branch is now retired and deprecated, a few months shy of 2010.
Many of the security improvements to the new versions of WordPress in the last couple of years were complete reworks of how various systems were handled. Porting those changes to the 2.0.x branch would have been a monumental task and could have introduced instability or new bugs. We had to make hard decisions between stability and merging in the latest security enhancements. Additionally, far fewer people stayed on the 2.0.x branch than we anticipated. I take that as a testament to the new features in WordPress and perhaps even more the features offered by plugins, many of which don’t support older versions of WordPress!
I’m disappointed that we weren’t able to keep the branch maintained until 2010, but since one of the big reasons for that failure was the massive scope of our security improvements for the newer versions of WordPress, 2.0.x doesn’t die in vain!
Last Wednesday, the core development team and a number of contributing developers met in the IRC #wordpress-dev channel to talk about which features should be included in version 2.9, which is now entering the development phase. We’ve been planning to focus on media features in 2.9 for some time, and unsurprisingly, it was media features that dominated the discussion.* A large percentage of the requests we get from users are for more/better media features, so we’ve decided to focus 2.9 on building an infrastructure for improved media handling that we can continue to build on in versions to come. In that vein, we need your input to determine which features to prioritize and build sooner rather than later.
These are the features that we’re asking people to vote on (in alphabetical, not prioritized, order):
Additional Media Filters: In the uploader, you can currently upload an image from your hard drive, link to an image from a URL, or select an image from the Media Library. This proposed feature would add links in the Media Library pane that would allow you to filter images to those that had been used most recently, used most often, and/or marked as a favorite. These filters would be available on the Media Library screen as well.
Basic Image Editing: Enable cropping, resizing and 90-degree rotation of uploaded images.
Better Media Settings: Enable the creation of more default media settings controlled in the Settings section, and allow settings to be overridden during the individual media upload process as needed.
Bulk Media Import API: Develop an API to allow for bulk media importing by plugins or importers.
Custom Image Sizes: Instead of hardcoded thumbnail, medium, large, etc. image sizes, custom image sizes would allow you to configure the maximum dimensions for each of the sizes.
Easier Embeds: Make it easier to embed third-party content such as YouTube videos, etc. Similar to Viper’s Video Quicktags plugin.
Media Albums: Ability to create and edit photo albums that can stand alone (as opposed to galleries being tied only to a post), including photostream functionality.
Media Metadata: Enable the use of categories and tags on media files.
Photostream: Create a Flickr-style photostream that simply displays images in a chronological stream (as opposed to grouping in galleries).
Post thumbnails: Choose an image to appear as a thumbnail with your post/article/excerpt.
Revised Media UI: Redesign the uploader UI to make uploading and editing media files a simpler, more user-friendly process.
These descriptions are repeated in the beginning of the voting survey, so if you forget what something means you’ll be able to scroll up to remind yourself. Only the first question (pick your top choice) is mandatory. This survey isn’t very long. Question two lets you assign a general high/low priority to each of the 11 feature suggestions, while question 3 asks you to rank the 11 features in order of priority from 1-11. A text box or two allow you to make additional suggestions, and that’s it. The survey is anonymous, and will be open all week, until Friday, July 10, 2009 at 11:59 PM UTC.
Results of the survey will be used to help developers decide which features to focus on for version 2.9. The 2.9 anticipated feature list will be posted here later in July, after the priority has been determined. How many contributing developers are available to code various features will play a large part in the decision-making process, so if you’ve ever thought of contributing code to WordPress development, now’s a great time to get involved. Developer chats are held each Wednesday in the IRC channel (irc.freenode.com #wordpress-dev) at 9 PM UTC (5pm Eastern, 2pm Pacific).
* – Other non-media features that were discussed either were determined to be better held for a future version for technical reasons, or were so widely desired that they were accepted for the 2.9 roadmap without requiring a vote.