A lot of the WordPress lists are going to point out the features you can see or will eventually see. However, that does little for those of us who care about what is under the hood. Here are my personal favorite 10 WordPress 2.7 features that I’m going to enjoy.
1. Inline Documentation
WordPress 2.7 will have complete library documentation and file documentation in the form of phpdoc style comments. There is also a phpDocumentor official documentation site. Although, some would probably wish for a PHPXRef site, maybe for WordPress 2.8.
The administration library for WordPress is missing inline documentation in many places, but all of the files that plugin authors will use is documented. Of course, to say that the documentation is complete does not mean that it can stop. The inline documentation needs to be continued by the continue and eventually the administration library portion needs to be documented as well for completeness.
2. HTTP API
People have complained in the past about the fact that they can’t access normal features, because their host is crap and disabled PHP functions for some reason or another. Well, all PHP methods for HTTP requests is implemented, so if you still can’t access those features, then you are totally shit-out-of-luck. That isn’t to say that the aren’t bugs with the new API, and those will be fixed when they come up.
The API is also available for plugin developers. It also handles chunked decoding for those that like to send HTTP 1.1 responses to HTTP 1.0 requests. If you send HTTP 1.1 requests, then you are taken care of. It does a pretty nice job of holding your hand through the process, so there shouldn’t be anything you need to do.
3. Plugin Uninstaller
Plugins now have a built-in way for when their plugin is uninstalled. Plugins are uninstalled when they are deleted.
4. XMLRPC Comment API
You’ll only care about this, if you 1) have an iPhone and 2) use the WordPress App for managing your blog. Most others probably will care less. Pretty hot though. XMLRPC is pretty good stuff, in general.
5. Amount of closed tickets
There are currently 450+ with the potential to have over 500 tickets closed. Doesn’t mean that WordPress is stable, but it does mean that WordPress is more stable than before. There are currently almost a 1000 Trac tickets for WordPress. Any milestone that puts a huge dent in that total is pretty awesome in my book.
The goal should be to reduce that number to near zero, but that would take far more community contribution than is current. Every new feature that is added will increase the number of defects, which is probably 2/3 of the rest of the 1000 tickets.
6. Theme API
The theme API will currently upgrade your theme, if an update is available. It doesn’t do everything the plugins have, but that will come in 2.8. Also, the theme has to be part of the theme repository on WordPress.org. It won’t work on external sites. Well, there are hooks you might be able to plug into in order to supply your users the same functionality, but probably not going to done.
7. Removed erroneous message from wp-config.php
The message “99% chance you won’t need to change this” has been removed from wp-config.php, but still remains in the wp-config.php creator. Ironically, after I pushed to have this put in, I am in fact using localhost more often. Still, it was worth it… maybe. At the time it was.
8. Optimizations
Some of functions were improved with optimized code. You probably won’t notice it.
9. Less Notices
If you turn on the ‘WP_DEBUG’ constant, you won’t see many notices as you would in 2.6 and before. This will improve the debugging for plugin authors as they won’t see WordPress notices and warnings.
10. Nothing
Well, I couldn’t think of a tenth feature that no one will care about, but perhaps you can inform me of a worthless feature that I may or may not care about. I can also neither confirm nor deny the validity of the claim that no one cares about these features (because I care about all of them… oops) nor the claim that these features are worthless (because they are worth something to someone or they wouldn’t have been in the version).
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Great call on #7. I’ve installed six or seven blogs and have yet to ever NOT have to change that setting.
I’ve been faithful to #7 and it still hasn’t bailed on me
Patrick D.,
Yeah, I thought it was a slap in the face every time I had to change it. Actually, I can use the host name now or I can use Localhost. Doesn’t matter. Hell, I can even use the IP of the server.
I do most of the wp-config creation manually instead of using the wp-config creator.
I think users will care about the comment API, or at least I hope so.
I have written a freeware Mac OS X desktop application that uses the new comment API. Its called WordPress Notifier and, you guess it, it notifies you when new comments come through. It uses the new 2.7 comment API.
http://www.wordpressnotifier.com
This is a great list, as a developer it got me excited about wordpress 2.7.
What became of your mysqli hacking for wp 2.x? (in http://www.santosj.name/general/installing-xdebug-and-mysqli-with-mysqlnd/ )
and the gsoc link is now dead as well.
Well, I finished the plugin for XDebug, but I’ve yet to be able to install mysqlnd correctly. Well, hell, I was wondering WTF I had a gsoc subdomain with barely anything on it. It was a testing site anyway for development of the plugin. The plugin is hosted elsewhere on WordPress Plugin Extend. I was never able to get mysqlnd to install or compile into PHP correctly. I plan on revisiting my gsoc project sometime in the Spring of next year. I think it will be more relevant then and I’ll have more time to devote to it.