Meeting Summary for April 15, 2010 Dev Chat
- We’re behind on menus. Ptah was working on it but has been MIA for a week or so, so filosofo is going to take charge along with a couple of potential helpers. If it can be done by Monday, we’ll move forward with menus for 3.0. If not, we’ll make the bummer-but-sensible decision to pull menus from 3.0, put it in a plugin for now to reduce the pushback on 3.0 release date, and hope for an earlyish 3.1 release.
- There are also a ton of bugs being reported with custom post types, multisite, etc. Even without menus, we’re not ready for RC, which means we would be pressing our luck to release on May 1. Consensus is that May 1 is more likely to be an RC with an announcement of wide release to come, but we’ll see. A few people who have been relatively inactive the last couple of weeks are planning to crank up the WP time in their lives now, so we’ll see if that helps us recover from being so far behind. If there is any chance of making the May 1 release date, that would be ideal.
- We got 16 GSoC slots, and are currently deciding which students we’ll mentor.
arena, 
Justin 1:46 am on April 16, 2010 Permalink
Can you be more specific about what we’re behind on as far as menus go? Link to some Trac tickets that definitely need to get done. The only major thing I see wrong with them is taking a perfectly sensible UI and changing it to something else.
Frank 9:31 am on April 16, 2010 Permalink
Please give the menu in a core plugin and plan the release 3.0 later as the 1.may – i think, this is not a problem for the community. developer has more problems with a buggy system
Francis 11:53 am on April 16, 2010 Permalink
Take your time guys, no hurry, no stress, anytime during may will be fine !
Xavier 12:30 pm on April 16, 2010 Permalink
I’m sorry I again missed the devchat yesterday (it seems most concerts I go to these days happen on Thursdays…), but I’d like to put my voice in favor of pushing the deadline a bit in order to have menus properly written in core.
This is a tremendous addition to users and theme-designers alike, and seeing as it’s the main lambda-user-directed highlight to the 3.0 changelog, it would be wise not to push it to 3.1, leaving 3.0 being mostly done for devs/themers/mu-users.
Anyway, waiting for Mondays decision. Will there be a discussion on IRC? Would like to chime in…
graynotgrey 12:53 pm on April 16, 2010 Permalink
I think it would be a shame to loose the new menu tool. It is a great feature that helps to significantly push WordPress further into the CMS arena. It is the one new overt feature (other than the new twenty-ten theme) that significantly gives more power into the hands of “normal” users to significantly alter their site(s) and it goes beyond simply the look of the site. A lot of users are not going to be too excited about the merge of MU and of custom content types.
I think another option was overlooked in the dev chat yesterday and that is to scale back the menu feature to the original specs: pages, categories, and links.
The introduction of tags, posts, and images introduced complexity, consumed much more memory, and makes it more difficult to scale. I now have to disable most of my plugins in order to fully load the menu page, otherwise I get an out of memory error which I only discover if I look at the source code of the page. Part of the problem is the memory restriction imposed by my host (1&1). I also have to disable most plugins in order to do an upgrade, but currently, the text of every post in the blog is loaded into the source code of the menu page which I do not think is necessary. However, removing tags, posts and media from the menu page would significantly simplify the page. These options can be added later or through a plugin. I do not think most people would want to create menus based on tags, individual posts, and media. If they did a work-around would be to use the custom link menu option for posts and media.
I have been testing the trunk version all along and posting in the forums. I will continue to do so to help get menus into version 3.0 which is a milestone release number that is deserving of this significant feature.
Montana Flynn 12:47 am on April 23, 2010 Permalink
Add the following lines to your .htaccess file and you won’t get the memory error anymore and will not have to deactivate any plugins. Just went through this the other day.
AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php
kellermans 1:38 pm on April 17, 2010 Permalink
Push the deadline back a little and add those finishing touches to the menu section. I’d say the new menu function is slick and a worthy feature to debut in WP3.
Nathan Rice 3:59 pm on April 17, 2010 Permalink
Menus are the most highly anticipated features planned for 3.0. Please don’t pull them out just you can meet an arbitrary deadline. Push out 2.9.3 if you need to fix some big bugs, but push of the launch of 3.0 until the menus are done. I don’t know of a single person who wouldn’t be willing to wait.
As to Justin’s comment, I think there are other things, specifically the accessibility issues, that still need work. But I agree that if at any point the only thing holding back the release is the UI change, you shouldn’t let that delay the launch. Delay THAT until 3.1 if you want. The current UI is completely usable.
Andrew Nacin 6:19 am on April 18, 2010 Permalink
It has extremely little to do with the UI. I’ve explained this more extensively at http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/12713#comment:14 so I’ll link there.
Nathan Rice 3:44 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink
Andrew,
My comment wasn’t JUST about UI … I also mentioned the arbitrary deadline. Why delay putting in a popular feature when you can just as easily delay the launch of 3.0? By just a few weeks, no less.
It all seems rushed, and for no good reason.
I know you just have to do as your told, but it would be cool if someone could explain this. Is releasing 3.0 at WordCamp SF really all that important? More important than completing a highly desirable new feature?
Jane Wells 4:20 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink
@nathan: I believe we already decided we were now shooting for an RC, not a release, by May 1, as there is too much to release by then.
Nathan Rice 4:29 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink
@Jane: that being the case, is there any reason not to delay 3.0 until menus are done?
Chris Jean 2:22 am on April 18, 2010 Permalink
I’d like to throw my hat in the ring for preferring a delayed 3.0 release with menus rather than an “on-time” 3.0 release without menus.
Trying to give users proper control over menus with custom-written code is a nightmare. Since a large number of plugins manipulate menus in various ways, making easy-to-customize menu options for a theme while still allowing plugins to do their thing is a huge time sink. Having a standardized, built-in menu handling system will remove these issues and allow theme devs to use their time for more beneficial developments.
While other big features like multi-site and custom post types are exciting, I think it’s fair to say that the menu feature is the most hotly-anticipated feature of the 3.0 release.
Bloggus 2:58 am on April 20, 2010 Permalink
I agree hugely with this post. Take time and include the menus.
Thoughts on the WordPress 3.0 menu system | One Fine Jay 10:32 pm on April 19, 2010 Permalink
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Danny G Smith 3:50 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink
I would prefer a delayed launch if Menu’s were included. It would make it so much nicer!
Joseph Scott 4:51 pm on April 20, 2010 Permalink
Since no one seems to have linked to them, here are the IRC logs from the last dev meeting – https://irclogs.wordpress.org/chanlog.php?channel=wordpress-dev&day=2010-04-15#m109839
There will always be more features that people would like to see in a release. As WP3.0 is already taking on more work that normal (WP/WPMU merge), trying to fit in an additional feature that wasn’t getting much developer attention (at least in part because of all the extra work in other places) is really hard. If there are developers who can step up and help make menu management happen then great (I’m really looking forward to having menu management be part of WP, even if I have to wait another major release to get it).
As you can see from the IRC logs though getting people to work on it hasn’t been the easiest thing (though more have been offering now) and some who were working on it haven’t been reachable lately. My concern with putting WP3.0 off for a month in hopes of getting menus fixed up and in shape is that it we’d be having the same conversation again a month later. Better to focus on making the merge (and other core bits) stable, slide menus out as a plugin for now so that development in that area can continue and then look at bringing it in as part of 3.1.
L’hebdo WordPress : WordPress 3.0 – Thèmes – Brèves | WordPress Francophone 2:06 pm on April 21, 2010 Permalink
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hakre 6:38 am on April 22, 2010 Permalink
If I remember correctly the January/Feburary discussions we had in chat and web, then menu was added after the first release-line-up was done. Since the then according to schedule too-late menu commits / feature requests were accepted only because it was said they get very much attention.
Now multiple weeks later I can not see much traction (we have accessibility issues on the whole thing since the beginning, it all feels raw even after the code-donation by the woo themes author(s)) and like Joseph wrote here, I think it would be totally okay to throw menu management out again for 3.0. It just was not within the 3.0 schedule since the beginning anyway.
The code is not lost so I see no problem to have that in 3.1. And: many plugins do offer menu functionality, so they can jump in as they do already today. So this is not something really new / needed in core if it comes to the end of day.
Last but not least: Even w/o menus there is a lot more focus needed for may 1st IMHO.
arena 9:19 am on April 23, 2010 Permalink
I believe this menu feature is related to themes and should not be embedded in core.
Keep it out of wordpress code.
Why not making it a canonical or core plugin where the wp community could still contribute.
I am looking for a way to integrate taxonomies to wp users. current profile.php do not allow this. Why not re opening ticket 9579 (http://core.trac.wordpress.org/attachment/ticket/9579/profile.jpg) ?
Brad Lindsay 8:15 pm on May 3, 2010 Permalink
I’ll also like to give my support to delaying the release of 3.0 to ensure the highly anticipated menu feature is included in the release.