Updates from April, 2010 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Peter Westwood 8:53 pm on April 28, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Agenda for Apr 29th 2010 dev chat 

     
  • Jane Wells 3:53 pm on April 28, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    ocean90 noticed that the .org profile pages are redirecting to BuddyPress.org profiles pages. It’s not intentional, and we’ll get it fixed, but the relevant people are in transit to San Francisco for WordCamp SF right now, so it might take a day or so. Your patience, as always, is greatly appreciated.

     
    • Jane Wells 4:06 pm on April 28, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Update: the reason was that the profiles broke during a BP upgrade, so the redirect is just temporary until we get them fixed.

      • Andy P 2:54 pm on April 29, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        I’ve fixed this now, the code needed a little refresh for the latest version of BP.

        • Martin 8:09 pm on April 29, 2010 Permalink

          But now your menu is not working (About, Blog, etc. at the top of the pages)

        • ocean90 9:59 am on April 30, 2010 Permalink

          Seems that the login doesn’t work, or?

  • Jane Wells 7:21 pm on April 26, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    GSoC Students Announced 

    Will write up a post with more detail after the new laptop is set up, but in meantime, here’s the list of students and their mentors:

    Barry Carlyon, WP as bug tracker. Mentors: Thorsten Ott, Westi as backup.

    Jon Stacey, API stream wrapper. Mentors: Aaron Campbell, Nikolay as backup.

    Kunal Bhalla, Events plugin. Mentor: John James Jacoby.

    Silviu Cristian Burca (Scribu), Ajaxify admin. Mentor: Nikolay Bachiyski.

    Daryl Koopersmith, Visual CSS Editor. Mentor: Beau Lebens.

    Justin Shreve, Theme for WP-based ideas forum.   Mentors: Jane Wells, Andy Skelton.

    Mike Whitfield, Dashboard setup/achievements. Mentor: Mark Jaquith.

    Stanislav Suscov, ScholarPress expansion. Mentors: Jeremy Boggs, Boone Gorges.

    Wojciech Langiewicz (Wojtek), Full-throttle trac annihilation. Mentor: Ryan Boren.

    Andrew Nacin, Theme revisions/child theme inclusion/editor. Mentors: Skelton, Beau, All.

    Brian McKenna, Automatic WP migration. Mentor: Dion Hulse (dd32).

    Sunil Kumar, atom/activitystrea.ms for BuddyPress. Mentor: Andy Peatling.

    Alexandr Truhin, Project revision to come, something around dashboard. Mentor: John Godley.

    Francesco Laffi, media and moderation/reporting for BuddyPress. Mentors: Boone Gorges, Andy Peatling.

    Matt Harzewski, comment moderation improvements and associated dashboard improvements. Mentor: Austin Matzko (filosofo).

    Congratulations, everyone!

     
    • Pete Mall 7:24 pm on April 26, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Congratulations everyone. Lots of good names and projects in here. I’m definitely looking forward to your contributions.

      Who let nacin in?

      • Andrew Nacin 8:00 pm on April 26, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        Not sure, but it looks like they braced for it by assigning everyone to me. :-)

        • Aaron D. Campbell 8:03 pm on April 26, 2010 Permalink

          Yeah, looks like we’re all teaming up on you! I’m guessing it’s because we all expect you to turn out so much code that it’ll take all of us to keep up ;)

    • ajorb11 7:25 pm on April 26, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Congratulations to everyone! All of these ideas should be great contributions.

    • Ian Stewart 7:25 pm on April 26, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      An exciting list of projects, students, and mentors. Awesome stuff.

    • Simon 7:52 pm on April 26, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Some exiting projects in there! Looking forward to seeing them progress… especially the events plugin.

    • Aaron D. Campbell 7:56 pm on April 26, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Congrats to all and I look forward to working with everyone this summer (especially Jon, thanks for choosing WordPress)!

    • Dre 8:07 pm on April 26, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Awesome lineup of people and projects! Congrats to all :)

    • Bowe Frankema 8:08 pm on April 26, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Congratz all! Some great projects coming up!

    • redwall_hp 9:50 pm on April 26, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Wicked. I was starting to doubt my chances when I heard how many applicants there were…

      Did my +10 charisma help the selection? :)

      • redwall_hp 9:51 pm on April 26, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        Disambiguation: I’m Matt Harzewski, for those of you unfamiliar with my “redwall_hp” handle.

    • mercime 11:53 pm on April 26, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Congratulations and best wishes to all GSoC students and Mentors.
      It would be great if there’s a dedicated space where the community could see progress of projects and inspire more student participation next year :-)
      Cheers..

      • Jane Wells 7:04 pm on May 3, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        We’ll announce a public blog for the projects and will schedule IRC chats where students can talk about progress.

    • Rilwis 7:18 am on April 27, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Congrats to everyone. I see some popular people here. Look forward to the future!

    • Xavier 8:29 am on April 27, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      These all look pretty cool, I do hope every project will reach completion. Congrats to everyone chosen!

    • RaveN 10:26 am on April 27, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Great news! All of them are great projects. Congratz! :)

    • TobiasBg 11:34 am on April 27, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      In the list on http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/program/list_projects/google/gsoc2010, there’s another accepted project listed that deals with WordPress:
      Student: Nils Dagsson Moskopp, Project: Support for CC licenses in WordPress, Mentor: Nathan Kinkade

      Wondering why it is not on the list. Is is not officially endorsed by wp.org/Jane?

    • hakre 9:26 am on April 28, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Sounds nice, can you or when can we expect links to the various suggestions you listed? Maybeon Codex?

  • Andrew Nacin 9:15 pm on April 24, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ,   

    Two new Trac keywords for UI/UX feedback 

    @westi added ux-feedback and ui-feedback, which both feed into the same report, http://core.trac.wordpress.org/report/35.

    A complete list of keywords is at http://codex.wordpress.org/Reporting_Bugs#Trac_Keywords.

     
  • Peter Westwood 9:47 pm on April 22, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    Suggest Agenda Items for Apr 29th 2010 dev chat

     
  • Jane Wells 9:00 pm on April 22, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Code Sprint after WCSF: Monday and Tuesday at the Automattic Pier 38 space. If you are planning to come and work on 3.0 bugs with us then, please sign up in the comments and let me know which days you’ll be there, and what times, so I can make sure we have enough space set aside (and drinks, and maybe tshirts).

     
  • Peter Westwood 8:33 pm on April 22, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    Live blog of Apr 22nd 2010 dev chat 

    Menus – filosofo has a patch ready which handles most of the remaining menu work including the non-javascript mode. Major remaining issues are some ajax improvements. Patch incoming, more news once filosofo has a chance to upload it.
    Schedule – Work on testing 3.0 in large sites has been going well with a merge into WP.com of a 3.0 running on a subset of sites. Testing against a number of plugins and themes has also been done by WP.com VIPs.
    We then got distracted by the kitteh -
    Beta 2 – We will aim for a Monday evening release of Beta2 once the menus patch has settled in for a couple of days and to give time for a patch sprint over the weekend
    If you want to get involved http://core.trac.wordpress.org/report/16 is a good place to start – A fair few of these, which are all marked needs-patch, may just need testing / triage work.
    WCSF code sprint – Monday and Tuesday at the Automattic Pier 38 space – sign up here
    We had a discussion about the removal of the default/classic themes and whether or not we needed externals to keep them on sites run purely from a svn checkout on upgrade and we decided that it wasn’t necessary – so if you run a site purely from svn and want default/classic then please install them again after upgrade. See this ticket for more info – http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/10654

    IRC Log – https://irclogs.wordpress.org/chanlog.php?channel=wordpress-dev&day=2010-04-22#m113552

     
  • Peter Westwood 9:26 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Agenda for Apr 22nd 2010 dev chat 

    • Menus
    • Schedule
    • Beta 2
    • WCSF code sprint
    • AOB
     
  • Matt 8:42 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Deadlines are not arbitrary, they’re a promise we make to ourselves and our users that helps us rein in the endless possibilities of things that could be a part of every release. We aspire to release 3 major versions a year because through trial and error we’ve found that to be a good balance between getting cool stuff in each release and but not too much that we end up breaking more than we add.

    Good deadlines almost always make you trim something from a release. This is not a bad thing, it’s what they’re supposed to do.

    The route of delaying a release for that one-more-feature is a rabbit hole. We did that for over a year once, and it wasn’t pleasant for anybody.

     
    • Matt 8:44 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Also, the more frequent and regular releases are, the less important it is for any particular feature to be in this release. If it doesn’t make it for this one, it’ll just be a few months before the next one. When releases become unpredictable or few and far between, there’s more pressure to try and squeeze in that one more thing because it’s going to be so long before the next one. Delay begets delay.

      • Michelwppi 12:39 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        As creator and developer of a series (trilogy around xili-language) of plugins for realtime multilingual CMS website based on wp taxonomies, I begin tests with 3.0-alpha mid of march. Globally and confirmed with recent betas, results are very very good – The trilogy runs with previous themes and new twentyten for both wp and wpmu. For me, the very main improvement of 3.0 is that the code is the same for mono and multisite (wpmu). In the past, I never test wpmu because too different. Because this, tests now are simultaneous done on 2 localhost svn servers (wp and wpmu – mamp not necessary connected to internet) and 2 on ISP servers. According duration and planning to do these tests and to explore new code to fix modifications and tickets in tracs; A delay of two weeks in WP roadmap is microscopic (RC in May).
        It is far better that final release WP 3.0 will be the most stable as possible for end users after good tests done by webmasters and themes or plugins developers.
        Congratulations for the core developers.

        Michel – dev.xiligroup.com
        Note: On twentyten and wp_nav_menu, I had opened tracs #13050.

    • Amy 8:49 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Is this why we did not get a RC release on April 16th like the Poject Scedule says?

      • Matt 8:52 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        We can review what worked well and what didn’t in the 3.0 cycle post-mortem, it’s not productive to focus on now. There was some expected stuff and some unexpected stuff. In general I’m just trying to spell out our philosophy here.

        • Amy 9:04 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink

          I fully understand was just wondering if that was why you posted this.
          On my own site I plan changes for a specified date so when it comes around to that every one is prepared for it. My forum it self will not be upgraded to IPB 3 until the first part of July.

    • Nathan Rice 8:53 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      I totally understand avoiding the perpetual feature-creep, but isn’t that what feature-freeze was for?

    • Ed Gray 8:58 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      You have a good pragmatic release philosophy which I appreciate, however, in the case of 3.0 it is not simply a matter of one more thing or one more feature to squeeze into the release -it is the custom navigation menu – one of the key new features promoted early on for 3.0 that a lot of users are looking forward to. It had options added to it that increased it’s complexity. I think if it was scaled back to it’s original specifications it would be more manageable and make it in 3.0.

    • bentrem 9:28 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Has someone lashed together some sort of chart? It doesn’t have to be PERT/Gant … just something to show what relies on what. (Maybe critical path would be obvious.)

      • bentrem 9:29 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        • bentrem 6:24 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink

          15APR10 20:49 – BrianLayman: “I know recruitment drives for coders don’t always produce results, but describing where we are at and linking to how to fix bugs in a post on the WordPress Dev might be a way to get people into it.” > http://bit.ly/axnu5j <

        • bentrem 6:26 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink

          15APR10 20:50 janewells: “i can do a post, but new devs traditionally complain that our documentation on how to contribute is lacking” > http://bit.ly/dB5IG4 <

        • bentrem 7:03 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink

          “Information about what the trac ticket is actually about should be in the ticket as I was browsing for tickets on things to help with, saw this, and just had to guess as to the purpose.
          So, I would recommend that if this is such a large blocker, that some links should be provided to help those that might want to help the project rather than keeping that information for those in the know. ”
          comment in Trac 16APR10

        • bentrem 9:35 pm on April 22, 2010 Permalink

          “geez.. looking through the bugs list on the trac system – thinking there’s a lot i need to catch up on before i can help in that section effectively”
          comment in IRC 22APR10

    • Banago 9:28 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      What will be missing in WordPress 3.0 from the features that were listed to be part of it?

    • Ryan Duff 9:48 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      When something is in but not 100% working before feature freeze, it should be considered committed to that version. If it wasn’t working enough, it never should have been committed as a feature until the time was right… avoiding this whole issue. Getting said feature working should be a bug fix process at this point and not just exclude it.

      What would have happened if the delay was because of MultiSite and not Menus? Would you have just excluded all the MultiSite code until 3.1? I think not. It would have been decided to bump the release back or throw a ton of resources at it to complete the task at hand.

      With menus being the most anticipated feature for 3.0 (Not MultiSite), there are a ton in the community with the know how and willingness to make this happen. Why a decision was made to skip it at this point is senseless. Solicit the community and people will step forward and donate their time to make it happen.

      • Peter Westwood 3:01 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        We have been soliciting the community.

        I would have had no qualms in chopping any feature that was pushing the release out this much.

        The real win with Menus is we can take all the code we have so far a put it into a plugin so that 3.0 can go without it but development and usage can continue – with the plugin then being rolled back into 3.1

    • Xavier 10:01 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      I understand the “delay begets delay” thing. In the “3 releases per year” mantra, pushing 3.0 further would mean squeezing 3.1 and 3.2 in a 6-months window, which might not yield the best of releases.

      I also understand that, 5 months after 2.9, 3.0 will not bring any significant lambda-user feature (I’m afraid TwentyTen is only significant to newcomers — and themers, of course).
      Sure, a lot of people will be happy (devs, themers, hosts), but if there’s not particular incentive for lambda-users to upgrade, it’ll take longer for all the shiny new 3.0 dev toys to reach the majority of bloggers.

      Also, I have to agree with Nathan, that feature-freeze was the time when this should have been properly, well, frozen. Now that it’s (supposedly) frozen, the next open-source move is to say “it’s ready when it’s ready”. Sadly, the inclusion of the menus was so last-minute, and it seemed so awesome, that some caution might have been thrown off for the occasion.

      That being said, I know of WP professionals who just cannot wait to have 3.0 released, menus or not, and who are already getting their clients to use 3.0, exactly because of the shiny new 3.0 plugin/theme toys (and the whole custom post types/taxonomies goodies, which indeed are gooooooooood!).

      In the end: make for the best, and keep up the good work, guys!

      • Amy 10:15 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        “it’s ready when it’s ready” IPB uses that all the time. I for one do not mind the delay as long as they create a good product in the end. I have only been using WP for around a year as both a blog and a cms and wow I am super impressed with it. Simple yet very powerful. I have yet to find a better cms that fits my needs better then wordpress.

    • Xavier 10:27 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Most open-source projects use that answer when asked when the next release is – it’s one of the freedom that FOSS affords you: not to be tied to market needs and marketing powerpoints for a given release.

      Still, the issue seems to be tied to a lack of helping hands. Let’s say the core-devs agree on pushing 3.0 a month later; what happens if happens said month, 3.0 is still not quite yet ready for prime-time? Should they push another month (and, as Matt wrote, deepen the delay), or drop the guilty feature altogether?

      We are lucky, at this point, to understand that 3.0 could be hard to release on schedule because of one specific feature. Sure, it’s awesome, but so are the other (maybe less noticeable) features – and they’re just as much worth of being highlights of 3.0.

      3.0 was already push almost a month later in order to cater for menu devs (first two weeks, and new again two weeks). Pushing it more with no clear focus on when the job will be done as one way to lead to another brick wall.

      In short, even though I would have loved to see menus get in 3.0, I understand the reasons cited by Matt, and agree to support them (as small as my voice can be).

    • Amy 10:35 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      I agree with you Xavier. Maybe they should just let the menu thing be part of 3.1 so they do not have any more delays.

      • Xavier 10:44 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        As I understand it, the idea is to take the current code and turn it into a plugin, so that it can be used while being worked on (therefore released separately to 3.0), until it is sturdy enough to be merged into core (hopefully for 3.1 then). Sounds sensible.

    • Mike Schinkel 7:43 am on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Matt, I applaud the WordPress communities use of deadlines and the relatively consistent 4 month release schedule.

      While there can always little hiccups in every releases the deadlines and 3x per year release schedule show a level of project maturity that few projects ever reach, OSS or commercial, and it instills a great deal of confidence in the project among those who decide to use WordPress for their web presence and for those who stake their livelihood on WordPress.

      In a word, “Kudos!”

    • Carl Hancock 2:16 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Deadlines are understandable. But I don’t think you realize how highly anticipated the Menu functionality was to the community. If you did, 3.0 wouldn’t be released without it. It would be like Apple releasing iPhone OS 4.0 without the highly anticipated multi-tasking feature. People want it. Badly.

      • Lee Doel 2:31 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        I totally agree Carl, the menu functionality is so important for this release, it allows a user to manage their menu in a far more flexible way – what more could be important?

        • Japh 2:41 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink

          How about, getting it right before releasing it? That seems important to me.

        • Lee Doel 3:01 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink

          @Japh I could not agree more but id rather they delay the release and get it right with the new menu functionality than release it earlier without them.

      • Tammy Hart 2:46 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        I’ve already been evangelizing 3.0 with the menus being my top highlight, next to custom content types. I’m even developing a new blog for myself that I hope to release at the end of May using WP 3.0 beta, and in fact using the new menus. I’d almost be tempted to leave it running on the beta install (I know it’s a no-no, don’t flog me), just because I love menus!

      • Tammie Lister 2:50 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        I have to agree with Carl on this one. I actually know 2 people who are making the move onto WordPress just because of that feature now going to be in the core. To me and I’m sure to many others a minor delay versus having that functionality in surely is worth it. Whilst I do not mean to make light of what time it would take or even know why / how long it would take to implement it to me it seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face not releasing with that feature.

        If you look at many posts about WordPress 3.0 they were covering that and the buzz that one feature created in and out of the community simply can’t be ignored. I feel sure you’d be hard pushed to find anyone complain if there was a delay to keep it in but you’re going to see countless voices over it being released without it – there in lies the indication of how important it indeed is to many.

        • Tammy Hart 3:00 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink

          Yes, and the weirdest part to me is that it seems to be fully operational, just not all that pretty.

    • Japh 2:23 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Good call, Matt. Better to release on time and push features that are delaying the process off til the next release.

    • Grant Griffiths 2:27 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      We were disappointed to see the Menu featured pulled. At Headway Themes we had already implemented this into our latest release.

    • Cory Miller 2:29 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      As has been said, totally understand deadlines and can’t imagine the project management that goes on with open source software … but yes, we at iThemes were VERY MUCH looking forward to the menus in 3.0 … and had already been preparing for this amazing new feature idea.

      It solves a fundamental customer need we’ve seen in the past two years.

      We’re pushing for the advancement of using WordPress as a powerful CMS (it already is) … and the Menu functionality is a key component of that.

      Just my two cents as part of the bigger WP community and relaying our day-to-day interaction with WordPress users.

    • arena 2:39 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      • arena 2:52 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        the global idea is to be able to create custom fileds and/or user taxonomies. things like that

    • Matt Danner 2:39 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      I have to agree with Carl. The menu system was an exciting and important feature to the community. There are many other great features that developers can take advantage of, but the menus were the best tangible feature to the average user. Pulling them because someone decided the UI needed to change last minute is ridiculous.

    • Jeff Lee 2:42 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Really bummed about the WordPress/Woo Menu system delay. WP+WPMU was inevitable. A PROPER menu system is THE killer feature everyone wanted and would most benefit users. I’ve been testing with it. I want it. I’ll take it as a plugin for now if you’ll let me.

    • Dustin Bolton 2:47 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Menu functionality is THE top reason normal users have been excited about 3.0 from what I’ve seen. Now it’s being pushed off to redesign the user interface design. The user interface in place in the beta version is completely usable and provides continuity with the rest of the WordPress interface (ie. Widgets). From the extremely sparse Trac ticket on the UI redesign ( http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/12713 ) it appears that those on the inside basically decided “Hey, I don’t like this.” and it was made so, pushing back the most anticipated feature without serious consideration or input from the community. As you can see from the Trac ticket there is next to no information in the ticket on pushing back such a major feature aside from a PDF of the ‘new and improved’ redesign which honestly seems like a downgrade as it pushes two menus side by side and breaks continuity with the way other pages are presented to the user (ie Widgets).

    • Jayvie Canono 2:56 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      I have to add to the number of voices expressing their regret about the Menus issue. The amount of time that one feature saves from the workflow of a themer and user is immense. Before Menus all we had was wp_list_pages, or lists into themes. This may seen inconsequential but it ties in to a growing encouragement to child-theme off of TwentyTen. Despite the many changes in WP3.0 was introducing, it’s the one that was added last that got the most praise and anticipation. I understand that 3.0 is Not Just The Menus, but the buzz around it was undeniable.

      I think it all comes down to message handling. One side says “okay well, no, we won’t have it as part of the core release” while the other says “look, we’ll help!” I can’t tell you *how* to resolve this dilemma, but Matt, I won’t assume it was an easy decision, either.

    • Chris Jean 3:13 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Overall, 3.0 is going to be an incredible release, but I’m sure that many devs will agree with me that the whole situation with menus stinks. Matt, you make a great point about keeping to deadlines, but what has fallen by the wayside with this whole topic is something very important: what role does the community truly play in crucial final developments for releases?

      I don’t want to make a big stink, but I do think we honestly and openly need to discuss exactly how the inclusion of menus for 3.0 was decided, how the course of development of the feature was decided, and why there is so little transparency on the whole process. Maybe the full details on all of this are readily available, but even with all my interest on topic, I still don’t know exactly where the feature development stands nor do I understand what needs to be addressed with the design/implementation.

      I caught the tail-end of last week’s IRC dev chat, and someone had mentioned that people interested in helping get menus ready by this Monday should help with this trac ticket (http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/12713). I looked at the ticket, but all that was provided was a UI design concept that made it look like all that was needed was flipping the positioning of a couple elements.

      After waiting a day for more helpful information to start flowing in, I posted an update to the ticket to try to find out what was going on.

      Nacin quickly responded and helped shed some light on the situation. I was told that if I wanted to know what is happening with menus, Trac is the last place I should look. I suggested that information pertinent to a ticket should be in the ticket, and got some helpful information along with the candid confession that core devs can easily forget that others don’t necessarily follow or have access to all their conversations. It’s interesting that he mentions “the UI team, the core team, the UX lead” but does not mention any community involvement in the decision. He then mentions that filosofo is working on some changes and that the entire feature is more or less in limbo until he sends his changes in. At this point, I still had no idea what the numerous teams had decided needed to be done nor did I know what filosofo was actually working on. So I essentially had no way of contributing anything even if I wanted to.

      The followup post by Jane was most troubling however. She basically suggested that I take my efforts and interests elsewhere as menus already have plenty of dev attention. It would seem to me that menus did not have sufficient attention as this past Monday was the soft deadline set (also not present in the Trac ticket) to get menus to a development point where they could be considered for inclusion in the 3.0 launch, and even now, the ticket has not been updated past my queries. So while I have no doubt that work has been done, I still have no clue where the feature stands nor if I have any means to contribute towards its release.

      While community is often held up as the driving wind behind WordPress, I have to ask, who exactly is this community? Because I certainly don’t feel like I’m part of it.

      I think the most crucial change that needs to happen is that Trac should not be just about code. While all conversations don’t have to be in Trac, the resulting decisions from outside conversations must be added to the relevant tickets to in Trac. Doing this creates a central authority for information, allows for devs that don’t care about the politics but want to contribute code to easily do so, and will reduce non-core dev frustration as everyone will have rapid access to the latest information.

      • JohnONolan 12:39 am on May 6, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        Chris, you know what the biggest problem with core WordPress development is? People who come in at the last minute and say “Woah, what the hell is going on here? This is all wrong, I don’t understand why anything would ever be done this way.”

        A lot of people here seem to think that they have some sort of right to demand things from the core devs at the last minute like its owed to them. If a feature (like menus) means so much to you, then get involved. Don’t get involved 5 minutes from the end, get involved from the start. Maybe seeing things from the inside might change your perspective ;)

        WordPress is like a cake for: Everyone else is baking it and you’re just complaining that there’s not enough icing.

    • Aaron Brazell 3:36 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      While I agree that menus should be in and this particular feature is important enough to sacrifice the all-important release schedule, I will disagree on the lack of community input.

      We talked about this – publicly – as a community – at last weeks IRC meeting. For almost 45 minutes. Starts around 20:30 UTC. I know, I was there and participated.

      So while I agree that menus really need to be here, I’m not willing to call this a subversive process.

    • Matt 3:59 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Any future replies about 3.0 will be deleted — this is not about 3.0. Not about 3.0. Thank you.

      • miqrogroove 4:06 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        Thanks for clarifying. I had the impression the train has already left the station for these other topics.

        Setting and following a release schedule definitely should take precedent over feature sets for project coordination in open source communities. There is not much room for adjustment before a milestone becomes stale and chaotic.

      • Xavier 4:10 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        I was just about to post about asking for a less cryptic message. Your initial post didn’t give any specific details about what and when, and therefore the crowd was left to extrapolate (I never thought I’d see the US wake up, but I did just by ticking the notification box on this post ;) ).

        So thanks for the clarification about your post not being about 3.0 (or menus, I take?) It would still be nice to know what it was specifically about :)

    • Amy 5:07 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Thank you for clearing it up. I personally thought it was only about the delay (although did ask to make sure as you saw above) that I was seeing which to me was not that big a deal as it does happen and some times thing do go against our plans. The menu stuff didn’t even know about until a I read a few replies.

      Any way keep up the good work. I still think wordpress is the most impressive cms and blog software avalable today. ^_^

    • Danny G Smith 9:42 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      The menus was the top thing I was looking forward to followed by post types. I hope it can be worked in.

    • Mark. 3:18 am on April 22, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      In the end you’re going to have people on one side saying that you rushed your last release (whatever release that is, of whatever application it may be) and that it should have been slowed down to allow for more time fixing features. On the other side, you’re going to have people who complain that they had to wait on you for what they expected to be in their hands so long ago.

      No matter what, this is a battle that can never be won with all parties ultimately satisfied. It occurs to me that this could be an epilogue of your other post here: http://wpdevel.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/i-dont-know-the-key-to-success-but/

      • bentrem 3:47 am on April 22, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        This reminds me of why I push tech_docs the way I do: explicate every good argument at least once and thereafter refer to it as required. “Write once; write right” was my tag in R&D. Here I’d say “Write once; cite often”.

    • Marie-Aude 2:19 pm on April 26, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Imho menus are one of the most exciting features of this new release for “mid level users”, .ie the ones who have some abilities to code, but not so much, the ones who are also comparing WordPress with other CMS, saying it’s just a blog tool. I had use it as an argument to convince one of my customers to use WordPress, and that would be a real pity if it would be left out, after having been so widely communicated.

    • Stephen R 6:46 pm on May 12, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Matt — I hesitate to say this, but it really just makes my brain itch when I see this. So first off, I’ll just say that I entirely agree with your post. You have to draw the line somewhere, especially when dealing with a large group, or there will always be at least one person wanting *just one more thing* added.

      That being said:
      “The route of delaying a release for that one-more-feature is, literally, a rabbit hole.”

      A hole occupied by rabbits is, literally, a rabbit hole. I know “grammar police” tend to piss people off, but this isn’t a subtle point. If “literally” can be used to indicate figurative speech then the word has absolutely no meaning. It means “not figuratively” and cannot have any other meaning without destroying its purpose.

      P.S. — I love Bentram’s “Write once; cite often”. The caveat of course is “revise as needed”. ;-)

      • bentrem 7:01 pm on May 12, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        FWIW: I came up with that in an R&D setting (avionics) where MIL-SPEC change management was a big part of my job. So all “revisions” were preceded by formal change requests. Multiple versions of anything was a strict no-no. (BTW it’s BenTrem … Ben Tremblay)

      • Matt 7:06 pm on May 12, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        Fair enough, I edited it.

  • Barry 8:14 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: migration   

    Over the next few days I have to migrate all of the WordPress.org infrastructure to a new location in our Dallas datacenter. We ran out of space in the old location and the datacenter is doing some consolidation that necessitates this move. The footprint is getting pretty big (WordPress.org and associated .org stuff now runs on almost 30 servers!). There will be some downtime for various services (mailing lists, svn/trac, pingomatic) as individual servers move, but I will try to keep it to a minimum. Downtime should not exceed 15 minutes for any single service, and website downtime should be much shorter than that. The migration has started now (lists.automattic.com is down) I will post back here once they are complete (I suspect it will be a few days before everything is moved.

     
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