Fresh

I am a huge WordPress nerd. When Mary asked “If you have a half-hour to kill in between meetings, what do you do?” I promptly replied “Read blogs about WordPress.  Which are written using WordPress.” (it didn’t make the video though, audio problems. Thank goodness. Hah.)  The past few months I’ve been amassing a collection of my favorite blogs about WordPress, and the ones I love reading the most are those that discuss current features being developed, upcoming planned additions to the core and other kinds improvements to WordPress and the WP community. Reading the dev chat summaries from the official WordPress Development blog get me damn near giddy sometimes. I’ve even found myself diving deep into development discussions, where previously I might have skimmed a bit and then gone back to Facebook before my eyes rolled into the back of my head.  But there are just too many cool things happening in the WordPress community right now, I feel like I need to have more and more information.

I’d like to share a few of things I’m excited about right now in the world of WordPress. Some of these are coming up very soon (WordPress 3.0 is on schedule to be released in April) while some might be rolled out over the course of the year, or maybe even next year. But even the fact that discussions are taking place  is very exciting for a WordPress dork like me.

WPMU merging into WordPress

This is a biggie. For any non-WordPress-nerds, WPMU (WordPress Multi-User) is like a separate branch of WordPress that allows you to have multiple blogs on a single installation. With WPMU you can allow users to create their own blogs on your site (like we did with Online Marketing Connect). Or you can use multiple blogs to better compartmentalize different types of content and information (which we’ve also done before).  The multi-user capabilities have come in quite handy and we use it quite a lot here at eROI. However, the problem with WPMU has been that it was separate from WordPress. Every time WordPress was updated to a new version and given new features, WPMU had to be updated with those same features separately. Releases for MU can come weeks after the equivalent WordPress release.

So now the “thin layer of code” that makes WordPress into WPMU is going to be integrated with WordPress, so they will be one and the same.  This is excellent news, especially for plugin users and plugin authors who always had to make sure plugin code worked in both regular and MU versions of WordPress. The feature set that MU provided will be known as “multi-site” in post-merge WordPress, and can be activated and managed from an admin settings page.  Here is an early-look tutorial for how the multi-site feature will be enabled and configured.  Unfortunately it looks like native multiple domain name support won’t be included in the 3.0 release, but we can cross our fingers for a later release.

Custom post types (or “object types” or “item types”)

When you build a site in WordPress you usually have to work with the two built-in content types, namely Posts and Pages. Because WordPress was created as a blogging platform, these content types make sense – “Posts” are your blog posts or articles, and “Pages” are your static pages like About or Contact.  When you get into using WordPress as a CMS, these content types can be a bit limiting.  It is entirely possible to build a robust data-filled website using WordPress and its default content types, but it can sometimes be confusing to a client (or whoever will be updating the blog) when you explain “Press releases and office locations are under Posts, and your homepage and about page are under Pages.” Unless you spend some time explaining the history of WordPress and WHY it has a “Posts” section even though their site may not have a blog, site management can be unintuitive and abstract.

Enter custom post types.  Instead of using “Posts” for Press Releases, just make a type called “Press Releases,” and add a section in the navigation for Press Releases including Edit and Add New functions. I’ve written before about the plugin More Fields and its custom post type abilities, but have yet to have a completely smooth experience with it (though still love its custom field capabilities).  Fortunately, native support for custom post types was much improved in WordPress 2.9, and in 3.0 it will be even better.  You will still have to register your new content type using a plugin (Discussions on Wordpress Trac indicate a post type manager UI in the admin area won’t happen), but the act of doing so will now automatically add manage & edit screens and custom taxonomy management pages for your custom type.

And that’s not all…

There is too much WP future goodness for just one post. Check back tomorrow for three more totally boffo advancements in WordPress!  Yep, I said BOFFO.