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New Role Management Plugin Available For Beta

New Role Management Plugin Available For Beta

By Jeffro on September 9, 2009

rolesandcapsRemember when I mentioned that Justin Tadlock was working on a new plugin to manage roles and capabilities for users in WordPress? A few days ago, Justin announced that the first beta version of the plugin is available to the public. So far, here is what you can do with the plugin.

  • Edit Roles: Edit your user roles and their capabilities.
  • New Roles: Create new roles for use on your site.
  • Content Permissions: Adds a meta box on your write post/page editor that allows you to restrict content to specific roles.
  • Widgets: Adds a login form widget and user-listing widget that you can use in any widget area on your site.
  • Shortcodes: Creates shortcodes that you can use to restrict or allow access to certain parts of your posts and pages (or any other shortcode-capable area).
  • Template Tags: New functions for use within your WordPress theme for various things.
  • Private Blog: Allows you to create a private blog that can only be accessed by users that are logged in (redirects them to the login page).

Justin is currently looking for feedback and considering the popularity from when he mentioned the idea, I’m sure he’ll get it. P.S. As for my idea regarding the name of the plugin, how about this: Cap And Role.

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Help Justin Tadlock Develop A User Management Plugin

Help Justin Tadlock Develop A User Management Plugin

By Jeffro on July 23, 2009

plugincomponentsA few days ago, Justin Tadlock put a link out on Twitter to a screenshot of a plugin he was developing that dealt with user management. Apparently, this type of plugin is in high demand and due to the amount of interest he’s received, he is going ahead with development but he needs our help.

The goal of this plugin is to be a complete management system for users, roles, and permissions. I want it to fit in with your administration panel and feel like it has always been there. It needs to work completely within the bounds of WordPress too. I’ve seen some plugins that don’t take advantage of WordPress’s roles and capabilities system.

The plugin will be developed in a BuddyPress like fashion where it will be made up of a number of different components, each which can be turned on or off by the site administrator. Think of it as a use only what you need type of system.

On the heels of this announcement by Justin Tadlock, the most recent WordPress developers chat featured an agenda item that dealt specifically with the roles and capabilities system in WordPress. You can read what was discussed in that chat here. The proposed system has me questioning whether Justin should be waiting for the new system to come into play or if he should continue on the track that he’s on.

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Can WordPress Be A Project Management App?

Can WordPress Be A Project Management App?

By Jeffro on July 15, 2009

There was an interesting post published on WPCandy.com by JD Bentley where he discussed three different ways in which WordPress could be used as a project management application. JD describes three different ways to accomplish this functionality. Using a plugin called WP-Project, using the P2 theme, or using a vanilla install of WordPress. However, JD notes that none of these solutions matches what BaseCamp can do either because the solution is too simple or the feature set is too complex.

JD has recently got involved with the development of WP-Project as he believes the plugin has a lot of potential. If you’re interested in helping out with this aspect of WordPress which Ryan Imel says is ripe for innovation, get in touch with him.

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Could BuddyPress Be The Poster Child Of WordPress?

Could BuddyPress Be The Poster Child Of WordPress?

By Jeffro on June 22, 2009

buddypresslogo Perhaps my point of view is wrong but when I look at how development is taking place for the BuddyPress project and how certain things are being accomplished, I can’t help but think that the BuddyPress project is proving to be a test bed for the way development might happen for the WordPress project in the future. For example, the project roadmap for BuddyPress was recently published online but before it was finalized, users had the chance to vote and rank on items that they felt were important enough to see in earlier versions versus other features. Jane Wells starting with WordPress 2.7 has used PollDaddy to conduct similar surveys in order to measure what the overall community felt should be included in the next release.

Another example is that BuddyPress has the unique ability to use the latest and greatest build of the software right on the site which is accessible to anyone who wants to register an account. You can actually test drive the software as it’s being developed. If any bugs are discovered on the site, they go right into trac or are reported to Andy. I’m not sure how far WordPress.org is going to take this concept, but I can certainly see the opportunity of using BuddyPress features such as the profiles and group blogging on the WordPress.org domain or subdomain with a WordPress bleeding edge install. With all of the activity and blogging taking place within this centralized community, it could be possible to increase the testing environment strictly for the WordPress.org software with any bugs being discovered sent straight to trac. Although, I’m not sure how smart of an idea it is to base your centralized community around bleeding edge software.

Group Development. Thanks to the ability of groups through BuddyPress, Andy Peatling is able to get developers or those interested in creating certain features centralize around one location for feedback, reviews, discussions, etc.

Group creation is now open on this site, why not pick a feature you’d be interested in working on and create a group for it? By doing this you’ll encourage other BuddyPress developers to join in, discuss the feature and give feedback. I’ll be more than happy to take a look at plugins that add roadmap features and consider them for inclusion in the core of BuddyPress. You may even end up as a core committer.

I think it would be cool to see the same kind of workflow make it to WordPress.org but I believe some of this already occurs through trac and other means. However, if WordPress.org were to do something similar to BuddyPress, it would open up the discussion, involvement, and contribution level to a much wider audience in terms of more user level feedback and not entirely developer centric.

Final Thoughts:

Do you think I’ve been able to establish any connections between the two projects or do you think this is all pie in the sky? I know they are both separate projects but I wonder how cool it would be if some of the development processes that Andy is able to accomplish would make it to WordPress.org.

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First Look At New Widget Interface

First Look At New Widget Interface

By Jeffro on April 13, 2009

Upon upgrading my development site for testing to the latest nightly build of WordPress, I discovered that the first bits and pieces of the Widget management system were added. Just as I had hoped for, the system works like a cross between 2.3 and 2.5 leaning more towards 2.3. On the left, you have a listing of available widgets. On the right, you have sidebars available where you drag widgets from the left, to the right, just like it worked in WordPress 2.3. However, there are a few differences.

widgetsin29

Instead of a drop down list of sidebars available, all of them in your theme show up on the right hand side. Also, the sidebar titles are shown on the right so if a theme author has given the widgetized areas of their theme common sense placement names, it should be rather simple to place widgets in the desired location the first time around. Also, multi-widgets works as expected.

inactivewidgets

At the bottom of the page is a container for inactive Widgets. At this stage of the game, I am a bit confused with why there is an inactive widgets container and a container filled with widgets you can use. They are all widgets and if they are there, then they are all usable. But this system is still very early in development. It’s obvious that a few styling issues need to be addressed but more importantly, some UI enhancements need to take place which I’m sure will happen in the coming days.

widgetoptions

But I can honestly say, I like what I’m seeing and I’d rather just drag stuff around rather than clicking around and selecting drop downs from multiple sidebars.

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Media Management In WordPress 2.9

Media Management In WordPress 2.9

By Jeffro on April 12, 2009

wordpress27medialibraryHow long has it been since we started talking about the media management system in WordPress receiving a major overhaul? Based on what I’ve read, the plan is to revamp the media system in WordPress 2.9 instead of WordPress 2.8. Shane who operates Bugssite.org has released his proposed wireframes for media management in WordPress aimed at version 2.9.

You can download the PDF file containing the wireframes here.

Here is the proposed workflow for how the new media system would work.

mediamanagementworkflow

Reading over the PDF document, here is what I’ve been able to figure out.

Groups Inside Of Media Items – The new system would allow you to create groups inside of media items. For example, lets say you went on a trip to both Florida and Georgia and you wanted to showcase your photos. Currently using the Gallery shortcode, you would end up showing all of the images. The new way would enable the ability to do something like this [gallery_florida] [gallery_georgia] or something similar to that affect.

Better Media Organization – The new media system will incorporate a way for you to categorize and tag media elements as they are uploaded. This will be done without having to go through a seperate screen during uploading making it a speedier process.

Much Better TinyMCE Integration – TinyMCE will have much better control with the images. You won’t be able to drag images from one section into TinyMCE but this gives the developers a chance to control how TinyMCE will deal with those issues. The new system will try to take TinyMCE image previews up a notch by going for the full gallery.group preview to show you exactly what it will look like based on the settings you have chosen instead of having to do a full post preview.

The development around the new media management system will be conducted in three stages on a seperate branch of WordPress so as not to mess up trunk for 2.9.

The first stage will revolve around cleaning out all of the media related functions to start from scratch. Development of the upload process will take place first along with the library, categories and tagging system. Shane makes a great point within the wireframe document that they will need to make sure the 2.8.x inline format is developed so that the millions of blogs running on WordPress do not lose file associates or deletes.

The second stage will consists of development around the media system post box inside the post/page screen. This will also contain the upgrade to TinyMCE.

The third and final stage will be all about usability. Remember all of the testing that was involved with the redesign of the backend of WordPress 2.7? That is the kind of testing that the media system will undergo once they reach stage three. This testing will determine things such as where tags, categories, and comments are listed, how to preview images, how to deal with a large number of images that are unassociated, etc.

Good Job Shane

I remember when Shane put together some code that would enable multiple gallery support in WordPress. Since then, he has grabbed the bull by the horns and as you can see via his wireframe proposal for the media management system, he may be the one largely responsible for how we manage our media in WordPress 2.9. I want to thank Shane for stepping up and getting knee deep with revamping the media management system which definitely needs to be done, one way or another. File/image associations alone would be cool.

The proposal states that the goal is to have an Alpha at the end of July or earlier with a beta aimed at the end of September and finally, a release in October 2009. I highly encourage you to read through his proposal and then, provide him with your feedback either through the WP-Hackers mailing list, the WordPress Developers IRC Channel or via the comment form on his blog.

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Sleeker Custom Widget Interface

Custom Widgets 2.0 Released

By Jeffro on March 16, 2009

Tom Slayer who is the author of the Custom Widgets plugin that I wrote a review about on Performancing.com back in November 2008, sent me a note that he has released version 2.0 of the plugin. One of the things that worried me about the plugin is its interface for how you configured widgets. Thankfully, Tom has redesigned the interface from the ground up so it’s more intuitive.

On top of the new interface design, two new features found their way into version 2.0. Widget name display and more organized management.

Sleeker Custom Widget Interface

Sleeker Custom Widget Interface

So how does Custom Widgets weigh in against Kaspar’s Widget Context plugin? Well, I’ll have to use Custom Widgets to let you know but I moved away from Custom Widgets at first because of their complicated interface. Since that has changed, I may find myself switching back to custom widgets. While I enjoy using Widget Context on this blog and enjoy Kaspar’s work, the plugin does have some weird configuration quirks in that, the configuration settings I give a widget never seem to take affect after the first try. You have to save the configuration twice. I also know that Kaspar’s is a busy bee and doesn’t have much free development time to devote to the plugin so at this point, it looks like Custom Widgets is more actively developed than Widget Context.

What I think will be interesting is seeing if any one of these two Widget management systems find there way into the core of WordPress 2.8 in some form or fashion. Or, if we’ll see something completely different.

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