Lead Developer of WordPress Mark Jaquith explains the philosophy and goals behind WordPress development outlines areas where it has fallen short, and exhorts others to action.

1. What I Hate
About WordPress
(and how you can help!)
by Mark Jaquith
(JAY-kwith)
markjaquith.com
@markjaquith
Sunday, December 6, 2009

2. WordPress
Sucks*
Sunday, December 6, 2009

3. *All software sucks.
Sunday, December 6, 2009

4. Sunday, December 6, 2009

5. Wuh?! MECHANICAL PRESET BUTTONS!
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6. Sunday, December 6, 2009

7. Sunday, December 6, 2009

8. Sunday, December 6, 2009

9. Sunday, December 6, 2009

10. The good news:
We know that
WordPress sucks
Sunday, December 6, 2009

11. Good software
sucks less with
each release.
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12. Sunday, December 6, 2009

13. The road to less suckage:
•Knowledge
•Skills
•Orchestration
•Time
Sunday, December 6, 2009

14. Knowledge
"You don't know what
you don't know."
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15. Admin Menus
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16. Sunday, December 6, 2009

17. FAIL
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18. Sunday, December 6, 2009

19. Cross-taxonomy
queries
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20. register_taxonomy( 'Director', 'post' );
http://example.com/director/stanley-kubrick/
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21. category = 'reviews'
AND
director = 'Stanley Kubrick'
Combo FAIL
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22. Search
Sunday, December 6, 2009

23. Search for "24"
No... twenty FOUR
Sunday, December 6, 2009

24. GOOD NEWS!
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search/
• Google Summer of Code project by
Justin Shreeve
• Plugin that implements powerful,
pluggable search API
• Supports multiple backends: Google,
MySQL fulltext, Sphinx, etc
• Much more relevant results!
Sunday, December 6, 2009

25. Upgrades
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26. • Could cause plugins to break
• Forced to upgrade to latest WordPress
version — no security updates for old
versions
• No idea what is in plugin upgrades — is it
a security fix or a complete rewrite?
Sunday, December 6, 2009

27. • We collect plugin compatibility info —
maybe we could work active installs into
that.
• We're considering offering security-only
upgrades to the previous branch until the
new version is in beta: e.g. 4.5 would be
supported until 4.7 is in beta.
• Plugin authors will be able to convey an
upgrade message, "Security update,
everyone upgrade!"
Sunday, December 6, 2009

28. WYSIWYG
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29. • Markup isn't always perfectly clean.
• Paste from a website, get their <font
style="Arial"> ?!
• Tempts you with the promise of desktop
editor control, falls short.
• Bizarrely complicated pop-ups.
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30. Sunday, December 6, 2009

31. Sunday, December 6, 2009

32. Page
Navigation
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33. • Blog
• About
• Flickr Photostream
• Contact
• Thanks for contacting me!
Sunday, December 6, 2009

34. Solutions?
• Menu creator tool
• Pick the pages, posts, URLs,
etc you want to link to
• Rearrange
• call with the_menu( 'main' );
Sunday, December 6, 2009

35. How you
can help
Sunday, December 6, 2009

36. • http://trac.wordpress.org/
Open a new ticket, comment on existing
one. Test. Patch. Advocate.
• Run the gauntlet: wp-hackers mailing list
• Weekly IRC meetings in #wordpress-dev
on Freenode
• Reach out to core devs and Jane Wells —
we'll get someone to mentor you and
point you at a problem that you can help
solve.
Sunday, December 6, 2009

37. "Together, we can make
WordPress suck less."
— me
:-)
Sunday, December 6, 2009

38. markjaquith.com
coveredwebservices.com
@markjaquith
Sunday, December 6, 2009