Let’s solve the problems with WordPress!

August 24, 2010 • Topics: Notes, WordPress

Never one for shying away from a challenge, my most recent endeavour is all about fixing the problems with WordPress. Now, I’m not talking about fixing bugs in WordPress per se, rather solving the issues with the platform. From controlling the post flow to making more flexible text widgets, I’ll join up with friends to create plugins, themes and code snippets that’ll help you all to create better WordPress sites.

While I do have a list of things I think WordPress needs, mostly added functionality for better control when using it as a more traditional CMS, I’d like to hear from you guys. What do you miss in WordPress?

Share in the comments below, and your wish might come through, GPL’d and free for all of course!

http://twitter.com/JesperBylund JesperBylund

Definitely flexible text widgets. Just being able to better manage text, posts and pages are not simple enough to administrate as it is.

Something that would be completlely amazing would be drag and droppable elements of pages. But that set’s boundaries for the theme creation.
http://www.davidpaulsson.se/ David Paulsson

WP needs better controll when managing larger websites with many pages (sites that have a complex hierarchy).
http://slowmove.se/ slowmove

dubbelpost
http://slowmove.se/ slowmove

WordPress needs a better standard page view, a page tree like every CMS out there. It also needs something like the properties in EPiServer. The nearest you can come today is by using More Fields.
http://twitter.com/magnusedlund Magnus Edlund

An iphone-app that doesn’t suck.
http://www.bjornsennbrink.se Björn Sennbrink

More advanced settings for hiding/showing elements on the Dashboard (in order to make it easier to hand over control without the help of plugins like Adminimize). Also the option to set column width “inside” the admin area (without manual editing of wp-admin/css/widgets.css and other css files).
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=582811404 Vicky Stringer

how to cut and paste cells from excel and have them display as a table.. Definitely on my wishlist (using http://tableizer.journalistopia.com/ for this at present)
Mathias Astrom

This is my list of what WordPress needs:

* It needs a more flexible and advanced search. Lets face it, the WordPress search sucks ass.
* Edit and control user roles.
* Build out the new Menu system so it works for sidebar menus. So it can automatically detect where it is and hide/show certain menu items depending what menu item your viewing. At the moment its only possible with pages.
* Manage large nests of pages and menu items easier.

The search and user roles is highest on my wishlist though.
Anonymous

WordPress need to step up and become semantic. Time to move away from decade old timestamped articles. Being able to easily link between any piece of information – article, search pattern, widget and to combine them on the fly. They should take the best from wiki-systems and deploy in their typical dead simple WordPress manner.

They should also employ a contribution/commenting system built upon the fact that an article can be re-posted, linked to and discussed anywhere, in any medium. E.g. Disqus on steroids. Social should be core in WP, not just something you tag on to the end of the article.

Time to innovate!
http://tdhedengren.com Thord Daniel Hedengren

Would you care to expand your wiki thoughts, I find them intriguing!

As for social in the core, I still think that a modular system is better, but a nice way to add the functionality you’re describing (via a plugin) is a great idea.
http://tdhedengren.com Thord Daniel Hedengren

Nice ideas, although I still think we’re looking at a plugin here. But a plugin that lets you customize the things you mention, along with colors and logos and so on would be pretty neat. Thanks!
http://tdhedengren.com Thord Daniel Hedengren

Within the admin interface you mean?

Also, it would be great if you detailed the property features you miss from Episerver, why More Fields can somewhat replicate it, and how it should be done in a modern CMS (because I sincerely doubt Epi’s got it right!). Anything that can help us crystallize it into functions, features and stuff like that will help!
http://tdhedengren.com Thord Daniel Hedengren

Thanks for all the great comments thus far. Keep ‘em coming!
http://tdhedengren.com Thord Daniel Hedengren

Care to elaborate? How would it work, ideally?
Pingback: Låt oss fixa problemen med WordPress!
http://slowmove.se/ slowmove

You can for example set that a page type will have checkbox for hiding that page in menus och such functions that you code into your theme. More Fields is quite near the functionality that’s in EPiServer but I would love it more integrated och easy to set up.

So to make it clear. For example I always to that one with “hide in menus”. In More Fields I set that all Pages will have a checkbox named with title “Hide this page in menus” and key “hideinmenu”. Then in my theme, in the for loop that creates my top menu for example, I code

if((get_post_meta($page->ID, ‘hideinmenu’, true)) != ‘checkbox_on’) {
//write out the
and
}

So if the checkbox has the value “checkbox_on”, the link will never appear.
I think it’s a functionality that without a doubt has to be in the core. So even editors can create pages that will not appear in menus, even if they should be accessible.

Good enough?

Anonymous

Drupal type blocks and block regions to make it easy to place blocks of content from inside the CP, along with simple control on which pages or content types they are displayed. This is my no. 1 issue with WP which is why I run Drupalminstrad. Fix it and I’ll convert!

http://www.solvedahlgren.se/ Sölve Dahlgren

Episerver is hardly a CMS to get inspired by overall. Worst interface I have seen…

Personally I hate the treeview in Epi, especially when they use it for newsposts.

But I guess there can be good parts as well?

http://slowmove.se/ slowmove

I agree that the tree view shall not be used when viewing posts, but when viewing pages. In WordPress those two are separated.

Tobias Nygren

(Känns lite fånigt att skriva på engelska men ok:)
Two things WordPress lacks:

1) internal links function in text editor. Something like rb internal links-plugin but with visual links and without shortcodes and messy search-GUI.

2) “a media viewer/list” inside the admin. The current media library never shows you which files or images are attached to a post (except the post thumbnail).

And of course, as slowmove says: if WordPress is serious about post types we need to have a GUI and a way to turn our custom fields into images, dates, numbers, links and wysiswyg-editors.. It’s not only Epi Server which works this way: drupal, silverstripe, litium studio, red dot and modx also does..

http://twitter.com/magnusedlund Magnus Edlund

Also, you should be able to search comments. That is, readers should be able to search the comments.

http://twitter.com/andreaswedberg Andreas Wedberg

Oh, this is good!

- Be able to copy a page (and post) with all prefs and custom fields intact
- Some way to “jump” from one page to another without having to click “Pages”. Especially when you have pages that is located on page 2 you have to waste another one click to get there. This is really time consuming when building sites from scratch.

I would recommend previous comments to have a look at the plugins by Pär Thernström that we blogged about: http://www.plucera.se/blogg/ny-favorit-for-mer-innehall-i-wordpress/. It’s one tree-view plug and one to replace More Fields.

http://twitter.com/remosometimes Remo R.

Image preview for category, using wp_list_categories.

Anonymous

Wiki’s strength are easy linking between information items (e.g. articles) and the MediaWiki templating engine, where any article can be composed of other articles, including possibilities of parameters. That means you only have to write one piece of content once, and either easily include it or link to it from another piece of content.

But a good start would be some dead simple linking between articles, e.g. autofilling article links and ability to import an article into another using some simple keyword.

http://tdhedengren.com Thord Daniel Hedengren

So each category would have its own featured image?

http://tdhedengren.com Thord Daniel Hedengren

Yep. As for menus, the new Menus feature kind of solves that if you’re OK with updating them manually (although top level Pages can be added automatically). Exclude from Menus option on a per-Page basis might still be a nice idea though.

http://tdhedengren.com Thord Daniel Hedengren

This Page tree, you want it on listings (instead of today’s kind of crude thingy) and on the Edit Page screen, correct?

http://www.lindqvist.com/ Nikke Lindqvist

If I can pitch in here, an easier, built-in page tree (like the one slowmove suggests). We need a way to easier sort pages, rearrange them, add hidden pages in some instances.
It’s easy enough to add a page within a given structure today, but it can be a true horror show to rearrange them.

http://www.lindqvist.com/ Nikke Lindqvist

Timed revision changes
The first WordPress feature I’ve been looking for is Timed revision changes, so that I can change a page or a post, save the changes as an upcoming revision and set a date and time for when they go live.
This is crucial when applying WordPress as a CMS on corporate sites.

http://www.lindqvist.com/ Nikke Lindqvist

Alternative titles for posts and pages.

I really would like to have a second-level title built in to WordPress. This can be accomplished with custom fields today, and many themes and plugins use this teqnique for setting seperate post/page titles for navigation, feature boxes… But these settings seldom transfers, when changing to another theme, or when the plugin is abondoned.

http://studio55media.se Tobias Björkgren

I really would like WordPress media library too be updated. Now you have to re-import photos everytime you want to post them it in a gallery, also you can’t show more than one gallery on each post. (well you can, but you have too create a new post with a gallery and import the gallery ID, that doesn’t cut it) maybe folders in the media library, cause face it when you have more than a 100 images it is getting quite hard to find the right one.

http://slowmove.se/ slowmove

For posts I think it still should be like today, in time order. For pages it will better be a page tree. Look att the plugin CMS Tree Page View. It’s quite near what I want. Even with the functionality.

One more thing: A better search! The plugin Relevanssi does a great job here. It makes the built in search show the result according to relevance instead of timestamp. It really great.

Pingback: Nikkelin – 2010-08-26 | nikkelin lifestream

http://www.martinpeterffy.se Martin Peterffy

I would like WordPress to automatically sort the letter “Ö” (the latest letter in the swedish alphabet) to be sorted last instead of as an “O”.

Tobias Nygren

Isn’t this a database collation issue?

http://eskapism.se/ Pär Thernström

I agree with the ability to jump directly from a page without the need to first go to pages and then find you page and then click it. When working with WordPress for “CMS”-sites that would be really handy.

I’ve experimented a bit with this as a option for my CMS Tree Page View-plugin and it seems to work pretty ok. The way I do it is that I just output all the pages in the left menu. It works ok with one level but I don’t know know what to do with sub pages yet.. :/

http://tdhedengren.com Thord Daniel Hedengren

It is possible to do it with the database, but then again you might not want to do alterations there. We did solve it for a client, maybe we could pluginify that.

http://www.feedmeastraycat.net/ David

Yeah. When you set up a WP and you know primary language is gonna be something else then english you shouldnt really use the default collation. Other languages then Swedish will have the same problem.

Tobias Nygren

That would be nice! I have an idea related to this: custom installer. An customizable “one click installer” that downloads the latest.zip and sets options you want (preferably by some sort of settings file).

Maybe this idea could be combined with your?

http://blogtrain.se Stellan Löfving

Two things: the search in WordPress is hopeless, needs to be improved. And the process of localizing a WordPress installation (changing the language, that is) is far too complicated for the average user.

http://twitter.com/MerovingiaN Metin Ucar

Hi there! I have a problem with More Fields checkbox and while looking for the solution came across your comment. I intend to use checkbox as a control and include/exclude custom field values into/from from posts. I have written the following piece of code based on your example in the comment, but it doesn’t work.

<?php if((get_post_meta($page-ID,'omdome_enable',true))!='checkbox_on') {

// Values of custom fields.

} ?>

If checkbox is checked, a div with entry-box class will be created. Otherwise, this div will not be shown at all. What am I doing wrong in the code above?

Thanks a lot in advance. Appreciate your help!
Regards.

Anonymous

Shortcodes may have been a good idea at first, but in truth, in modern web development, they’re quite stupid. Making clients type arbitrary meaningless code to get something visual to happen is ridiculous. It’s a huge barrier to adoption. Plug-ins should have to register their options, and provide a visual approximation of their rendering when adding a plug-in “component” to a post / page.

http://www.sparkdrakt.se/ One Piece

The ö thing.

Let’s solve the problems with WordPress!

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