WordPress Dev Chat For 7-8-09

The first part of the meeting provided an update on the Google Summer of Code projects related to WordPress. The best way to stay updated and even check out the work people are doing since it’s open would be to check out http://gsoc2009wp.wordpress.com/

Next we discussed the poll results thus far for priority of features for WordPress 2.9. So far, these are the top choices percentage wise: albums 17.6, basic image editing, 14.6, easier embeds, 14.3, post thumbnails 13.9. As far as the question which I inquired about yesterday with canonical plugins or core, here are the results: core 53.2, canonical 41.2, plugin 5.6. The poll results will be published on Friday. We were told today that so far, 2,400 people have voted.

Next up was the topic of non media features. The big one which was discussed last week was the ability to do a compatibility check for plugins as part of a WordPress core upgrade. Jane spoke with Matt and Peter Westwood and they both believe they can have this in WordPress 2.9 as long as it goes smoothly. This is still being debated quite heavily on how to properly implement such a feature so look for discussions to take place either in followup meetings, the hackers mailing list or the Developers Prologue site.

Then the discussion turned to figuring out who wanted to take on coding the feature set for WordPress 2.9. Obviously, I didn’t raise my hand. Looks possible that WordPress 2.9 may contain a feature where users will be able to login via their email address. There is also talk of something called an Undo feature like in Gmail where instead of getting a prompt to ask for confirmation when you click delete, you can just delete something but have the ability to undo it. This will introduce something called a ‘Trash Status‘ for things that are deleted. One other feature that is up for grabs regarding WordPress 2.9 is Page Management. That is, the ability to exclude pages from showing up in the navigational menu and using a drag-n-drop interface to rearrange the page order.