Displaying 1 To 13 Of 13 Comments What Dev4Press Thinks WordPress Needs You are right, and the point of my wish list article cited here is that WordPress needs a lot more work that can’t be fixed with plugins as some have suggested. There are plugins for WP to replace the whole admin side, but that ain’t the point. It is clear that there are features that must be part of the core. I don’t care about the look of the admin screens and if they are green or black or red. I don’t care about theme customizer that is next to useless for most purposes. I don’t care about searching WordPress themes repository. And most people that use WP for business don’t either. They need a solid core that has all the things to deal with data, they all use custom themes they don’t plan to change for year or more, and they need usable admin screens that can do what they are suppose to, regardless of their color or pixel positions. I know that features I talked about are not easy to do, and that is exactly the point. Some of them are long overdue for rewrite and are becoming a laughing matter when WP is considered, like useless search. My point from all this, is that people leading WordPress Core development need to take a long hard look at all the problems WP has, at all the features that need to be in the core, and to make a plan for a long development cycle that will cover most of that. Making new WP every 3-4 months is a bad decision, and it needs to stop for the sake of WordPress. Take a year and give us better WordPress. Better WP core will bring better plugins and themes, and that will give us better websites. And with any open source project, if they don’t, someone else will. I would hate to see parallel WP development, but it can happen if the current development trend continues. Look at the adoption rate of latest 3 WP versions and you will see that current development cycle is bad, and that most of the users will not upgrade to a WP that brings nothing that important. Milan Petrovic » Posted By Milan Petrovic On April 18, 2012 @ 4:42 PM Upgrading And Backwards Compatibility For Plugins @Kevinjohn Gallagher – Developers don’t understand regular users, and to make things worse, most of the developers even refuse to acknowledge the regular users point of view. I know that, because I did same thing while I worked with my previous company. Since I started my own business, I look at things differently, I develop for my clients and users, and I can’t simply decide to drop support for a WP version without discussing it with end-users. I too had similar experiences with my clients, and most of them didn’t find any reason for upgrading to new WP versions after 3.0. Few updated to 3.2 because website depended on post types, and some of the improvements in WP 3.2 are directly related to that. Upgrading is not easy for most users. In some cases companies would like to run tests for the new system for few months even before using it. By the time they run tests on WP 3.2, WP 3.3 is almost released. Current WP development cycle is too fast, and I know that people running the WP core development don’t agree with that, but one major version each year would be much better solution for all, including those same developers. Adoption rate would be much better, and versions much stable if given more time to test and develop. I don’t remember a single WP version in the past 3 years that was released as planned, every one was 1 to 3 months late, proving that even the smaller features set is not simple to develop. I hate to see users abandoning WordPress (I don’t see that happening, really), but current version fragmentation is case and point to the fact that vast majority of WordPress users don’t agree with current development and release policy. » Posted By Milan Petrovic On November 30, 2011 @ 5:04 PM @Kevinjohn Gallagher – Exactly. As I said several times, 99% of all WP users are not developers, they don’t see things as we do, and fast changes of WordPress with 2 versions each year, that always brings some upgrade issues is not really considerate to actual users when they can’t see any valid reason to upgrade. WP 3.0 was a big step forward and a good reason to upgrade. WP 3.1/3.2/3.3 are only appealing to developers, and part of the wide community, so we are now having 50% of users still working with WP 3.0 Imagine if Microsoft releases Windows every 6 months. A total chaos. We have so much issues with Firefox with their insane 6 weeks release cycle, and endless list of broken extensions. Ubutnu with 2 releases each year is also very problematic and contra productive. » Posted By Milan Petrovic On November 29, 2011 @ 2:22 PM @Otto – That is a good step, all plugins that are left with no update for so long should be hidden from users. But, in the same time we need some method to reach out to users and let them know about benefits of new WordPress versions. And I think that ball is dropped with that since WP 3.0, most users decided to stay with 3.0, because they couldn’t see benefits of moving to 3.1 and 3.2, and I am willing to bet that same thing will happen with 3.3 soon. Good thing with 3.x is that there is a less incompatibility, and is not very likely that upgrade from 3.0 to 3.2/3.3 will break the website. Problem is that they see no reason to do it. And the numbers are telling exactly that: WordPress has too many major versions that go unused, and having one major release a year would be much better solution: core developers will have more time do work on it, more features would go into it, and there would be bigger awareness about the update, just as it was with WP 3.0. As you can see with current 3.3, it is already a month late, it has only one or two minor features that have appeal to most users (as a developer I love it, but again, developers make 1% of WP users). I know that developers running WP core development don’t agree with me, but the wide user base does if you look at numbers from WP 3.0 release until today. Big problem are versions older than 3.0, how to bring those people to update, and I see no solution for that. This is not a simple problem for many users, since many of them will require to invest into upgrading depending on the plugins they use. I have seen hundreds of WP 2.5/2.6 websites using plugins that barely work, but they depend on it, and they will crash with update. No one will update those plugins for free or help switch to different plugins. » Posted By Milan Petrovic On November 29, 2011 @ 6:53 AM @A4D – I doubt that PHP or mySQL is the issue, since according to WordPress.org data, only 10% of websites are using PHP older than 5.2, and 95% of websites are using some version of mySQL 5. » Posted By Milan Petrovic On November 29, 2011 @ 6:00 AM @Andrea_R – Of course we are not to support WP 2.0, issue here is with 3.0 and newer versions. There is another interesting data in one of the comments in my post on Dev4Press where you can see that overall download of WordPress 3.1 and 3.2 is down as well. This shows that daily downloads average are down 45% with 3.2 compared to 3.1. 13.000.000 downloads of WP 3.2 while high as a numbers go, is disappointing. People are content to have 3.0, they don’t see much point in using newer versions. But, users of my Pro plugins are using latest versions, and adoption rate among them is high. I am sure same can be said for other Pro development companies, and we on our own do a better job introducing new WP and new WP features to our users and they are more familiar with the difference and they are willing to upgrade. On the global scale, education about WordPress is failing. Simply cutting of users with 1-2 years old WordPress versions from new plugins is not a solution. Maybe it is from developers point of view, but 99% of all WP users are not developers. » Posted By Milan Petrovic On November 29, 2011 @ 3:30 AM Should The WordPress Support Forum Only Support Themes From The Theme Repository? This is very good point. Not only that you will be doing work for someone else profit, but this will also be exposure and maybe back links to the premium developer website. Even if this is allowed (and it is right now as I see it), there will be not many answers for problems with premium themes because of the profit reason. » Posted By Milan Petrovic On June 28, 2010 @ 3:51 PM @hakre - I don’t really have a problem with GPL, but from the previous discussion it’s seams that it’s OK to distribute and use ‘pirated’ (or better modified themes with malicious encoded code added). What is the line on what’s OK to do and what’s not? It’s one theme to distribute unchanged GPL theme, and completely another to add spyware and malware code to it. I meant that WP.org as a main WordPress website on the Inernet needs to do much better job on helping users understand the implications of using pirated themes, not helping them to use it, because they will be encouriging such practices. On so many levels WP.org is not doing a good job. It’s a great for developers experienced users, but I know for sure that many users are having problem getting around that website, and that’s one of the reason people running WP.org decided that is a good time to change and update and improve the website. And I hope that once that is done we will get a true WP starting point for all users. So many of the people tried to use WP.org and it’s forum were more confused than anything else, starting with WP system requriements (I have written on my website about it recently) to a great deal of confusion with plugins compatibility (it’s better now, but far from usable for most users). And even I as a developer, working daily with WordPress, I am avoiding WP.org as much as I can: WIKI documentation is just bad (I know it’s a community thing, but WP is not just some small platform that can rely on few good will developers to write documentation, it needs a rock solid documentation that is not full of wholes and missing functions and classes), forum with too many questions unanswered (I try to answer at least 90% of questions posted about my plugins there, but most developers don’t). Point is that pirated themes are bad thing, regardless of GPL. And that’s why for now WP.org needs to stick to themes in own repository. Once WP.org is changed for the better, things might be better. » Posted By Milan Petrovic On June 28, 2010 @ 10:23 AM I am sorry if I digressed from the point of the article, but since we are talking about WP.org forums, I thing that WP.org as a whole is part of the discussion, and I am happy to see that there are plans to finally change and improve this website (I think that in latest discussion on WP developers chat this is one of the main topics). We need strong WP.org, and forum is just one part of it. » Posted By Milan Petrovic On June 28, 2010 @ 6:59 AM @hakre - Yes, I agree that you can sell theme without support, but I am talking about the most used practice today and practice of the biggest theme developers, because that proved to be the best solution in the GPL theme environment we have right now. Also, I agree that educating people about GPL and the ways they can get the theme (or plugin for that matter) that is not full with malicious code is the best solution, but unfortunately so far, WP.org is still not doing good job, and that website should be the main starting point in educating users. After all these years since the GPL themes debate started, there is still no real and valid judgment on the subject, and WP.org doesn’t provide anything on the subject that will be helpful IMHO. But, this is not the first thing where WP.org failed, and it’s about time that this website changes and be more informative and helpful for new or unexperienced users. I had several clients (new to WP, but with a lot of experience in the field of CMS and publishing) that had trouble finding anything useful there, and that tells a lot. In any case, if WP.org allows support for themes not in repository, there is not much anyone can do about that, and premium developers that will be potentially affected by that will have no way to influence that. » Posted By Milan Petrovic On June 28, 2010 @ 6:52 AM All premium theme developers (including myself) are not actually selling the theme if they use GPL licensing, but they are selling support and upgrades. So, distributing pirated themes is affecting only users that use such themes (malicious code they usually contain and no support). With GPL you can’t really stop redistribution and you depend on the users honesty not to pass on what they payed for. If a premium developer sells a theme and then not provide support for the themes, than it would be a good thing to have some way to ‘report’ such developer and warn other users to stay away. WPTavern forum is a good place to start, and maybe you should add a section or thread fur such discussion. WP.org should be used for free themes that are available in repository, there should be a general area for questions about WP specific stuff that affects any theme (including premium) and that’s it. No help decoding the encoded/malware themes should be there, we need a way to warn users about danger of using such theme obtained from websites of the questionable legality. All WP developers should try and raise the awareness of this problem and help users to avoid such websites. Helping them using such themes and remove malicious code is bad, bad practice and should not be allowed. Premium themes are more and more used (I think even more than free themes), and if WP.org starts to go against premium developers even with such ‘small’ changes to WP.org forums, it will alienate premium developers. » Posted By Milan Petrovic On June 28, 2010 @ 5:35 AM WordPress Support Forum And Themes Most premium themes are already available on various websites as pirated versions, and they all are modified to include tons of hidden spam links in footer or header even (at the very least), but some I had a chance to examine (one of my clients got few of them and thought it would be good idea to use them) had many base64 and eval encoded content that (after decoding it) was adding iframes to other website and in one case sending current logged user info to an IP coded inside the malicious content. GPL is a freedom to distribute, but some things go too far away from simple distribution. Getting the premium theme easy way, pirated, to save few bucks will potentially open a door for all sorts of exploits that less experienced user will not be prepared to deal with, and he will be left with no support since he decided to save some money. I think that WP.org is scaning all uploaded themes for eval or base64 functions and don’t allow that to appear anywhere. » Posted By Milan Petrovic On June 26, 2010 @ 5:32 AM WooThemes Has And Will Continue To Get Credit I was just yesterday comparing the codebase used in current NavMenu in WP 3.0 with WooMenus, and I couldn’t find anything that these two share. WooMenus can’t be expanded, they support only link, page and category for menu items, all data is stored in sepparate tables in DB. WooThemes really did come up with excellent concept for the menus, and up to a Beta 2 release of WP 3.0, I preferred Woo implementation, because WP version was constantly broken and causing problems. But, with WP version there are some things I really don’t like: use of taxonomies for menu items. I would prefer if the menus are stored as serialized objects, most operations would be much faster that way. Also, I find strange the decision to put items widgets to the left instead of right as we all used to with other WP panels. » Posted By Milan Petrovic On June 1, 2010 @ 5:50 PMComments Posted By Milan Petrovic
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