Mark Jaquith 7:42 pm on January 7, 2013
Tags: 3.6 ( 65 ), autosave and post locking ( 8 )

WordPress 3.6: Autosave and Post Locking

I want, as a major 3.6 bullet point, that we should never lose posts due to expired cookies, loss of connection, inadvertent navigation (even if AYS’d), pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party or coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. errors on save, browser crashes, OS crashes, cats walking on keyboards, children drooling in keyboards, etc. I want people to trust WordPress with their posts. They should never fear that something they’ve spent time creating or editing should go away due to their mistake or ours or that of a third party. Mistakes and errors should be recoverable. I can’t stress enough how important it is that people believe this and have good reason to believe it. If a post gets lost, there is a catastrophic loss of trust, that could take years to be regained (if indeed it ever is). This is people’s time and their creative output we’re talking about. If we’re not valuing those things above all else, then our priorities are seriously out of order. This is an all-hands-on-deck item for 3.6. Even if you’re not actively working on the code or the copy or the UIUI User interface or the UXUX User experience I want you to be thinking about ways in which WordPress could better treat your creative output as the valuable artifact it is.

Things this will likely involve:

Local storage of post data while editing, in-between autosaves and manual saves.
More frequent “heartbeat” pings to the server (allowing data to hitch a ride at certain intervals, and also allowing us to quickly deliver messages back from the server about events).
Real and more granular post locking. Right now we just have a wimpy notice that isn’t a good deterrent against people simultaneously editing a post and overwriting each other’s changes.
Probably some interaction with the team working on improving Post RevisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision..
UX work for making recovery from failure scenarios smooth, clear, and worry-free.

@aaroncampbell and I have chosen @azaozz to lead this, as it will probably be very JavaScriptJavaScript JavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/.-heavy. There are a lot of moving parts here, so please leave a comment if you’re interested in this important, heroic, virtuous endeavor. 🙂

#3-6, #autosave-and-post-locking

Mike Schinkel 7:43 pm on January 7, 2013

+1!
Jon Brown 7:46 pm on January 7, 2013

+1 – May I suggest that versioning and autosaving of metadata be included in this push. I’ve seen several people become reliant on the revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. and auto-save of the content (yay, they trust it!) and then be disappointed to discover their excerptExcerpt An excerpt is the description of the blog post or page that will by default show on the blog archive page, in search results (SERPs), and on social media. With an SEO plugin, the excerpt may also be in that plugin’s metabox. or content in a metaboxMetabox A post metabox is a draggable box shown on the post editing screen. Its purpose is to allow the user to select or enter information in addition to the main post content. This information should be related to the post in some way. isn’t given the same treatment.
- Mark Jaquith 7:55 pm on January 7, 2013
  
  There’s at least one ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. that touches on that https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/20299
  
  But yeah, we need to start thinking about the fact that as more people use WP as a CMS, a lot of their important data resides outside of post_content.
  - Travis Northcutt 8:01 pm on January 7, 2013
    
    Absolutely this. We make heavy use of post metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. in sites we build for people, and storing revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. would be a huge plus. Does anyone know of additional tickets that address this? (The one Mark linked to is specifically focused on the fact that previewing changes to a post updates meta (silently), which isn’t expected behavior).
    - Helen Hou-Sandi 8:04 pm on January 7, 2013
      
      #20564
      - Travis Northcutt 11:20 pm on January 7, 2013
        
        Thanks Helen. Might I suggest that it would be natural for #18179 to include an argument such that when a metaboxMetabox A post metabox is a draggable box shown on the post editing screen. Its purpose is to allow the user to select or enter information in addition to the main post content. This information should be related to the post in some way. is registered, the keys in that box are then registered to have revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. tracked.
Pippin (mordauk) 7:55 pm on January 7, 2013

Huge +1.
goldenapples 7:58 pm on January 7, 2013
+1, I’m very interested in helping work on these features. I’ve worked with the authors on the site I manage to find workarounds for a number of related problems and have several ideas I’d like to test out:
- visualizing revision history as a tree rather than just a list (I look at vim’s :Gundo pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party as a rough UIUI User interface example)
- post metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. as mentioned above, although that needs a LOT of thought (lots of postmeta is never shown in a meta box, or is not meant to be edited by authors…)
- doing more to enable inter-user messaging along with the “heartbeat” autosave calls. Its possible to do something with websockets for the maybe 2% of sites that have that enabled, but for most people, the regular adminadmin (and super admin)-ajax calls could be used to pass messages back and forth about what other users are viewing, if one user requests a release of the lock, etc.
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adamsilverstein 9:07 pm on January 7, 2013

i’m interested in helping if i can
Anonymous User 9:19 pm on January 7, 2013

omg. yes.
Arnan de Gans 9:22 pm on January 7, 2013

And on top of that… While you guys are at it, make the dashboard, the whole of it, faster. Better loading, faster rendering (?) Whatever. Often on sites that have a bunch of plugins active it get’s really sluggish.
- Aaron D. Campbell 10:13 pm on January 7, 2013
  
  This is largely dependent on what they plugins you’re talking about do on the dashboard. Sounds like they’re likely doing something wrong if they’re slowing down the dashboard that much.
- Aaron Brazell 12:04 am on January 9, 2013
  
  Or nuke it altogether. I don’t have numbers but I’m guessing the majority of people spend 1% of their time in the Dashboard. I find it altogether useless, although I’m sure some would disagree with me.
  
  When I login to WP to produce content, the first thing I do is click on Add New in the posts menu. That’s a hover and a click more than I need to get into content production.
John Kleinschmidt 9:46 pm on January 7, 2013

I have been doing a decent amount of work around offline storage recently and would love to help contribute on the JSJS JavaScript, a web scripting language typically executed in the browser. Often used for advanced user interfaces and behaviors. side of things.
Md Mahmudur Rahman 10:10 pm on January 7, 2013

Excellent.
Grant Norwood 11:59 pm on January 7, 2013

Thanks, Mark. This is a great goal, and worthy of the urgency you’ve expressed! Since you mentioned post revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision., I’d like to recommend that we think about how to better compare post/page/CPT revisions within the rich text editor. As it is currently implemented, non-technical users have difficulty comparing large amounts of plain-text and raw HTMLHTML HyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers., and often give up immediately when using the compare feature. Developers are accustomed to the unified diff format, but we’re the only ones.

Could we take inspiration from the review/editing/comparison tools used in other popular copy-editing apps (i.e., MS Word) that would make a copywriter feel more at home when comparing content revisions?
- Helen Hou-Sandi 12:11 am on January 8, 2013
  
  Separate feature 🙂 https://make.wordpress.org/core/2013/01/07/wordpress-3-6-revisions/
Gabriel Koen 9:18 pm on January 9, 2013

I’d like to lend a hand with this, I can provide user insight (our dev team has been fielding issues regarding this topic for a few years from a large staff of writers) as well as do PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher and JSJS JavaScript, a web scripting language typically executed in the browser. Often used for advanced user interfaces and behaviors. coding for it.
- Mike Bijon 12:46 am on January 13, 2013
  
  Definitely loopLoop The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop. Gabriel in on this, I’ve been using his ‘PMC Post Savior’ pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party recently and it’s been a huge help in preventing lost posts: https://github.com/Penske-Media-Corp/pmc-post-savior.
  
  The best part about Post Savior is the UXUX User experience rethink. Instead of a load of JSJS JavaScript, a web scripting language typically executed in the browser. Often used for advanced user interfaces and behaviors. and localStorage it allows re-login over the top of the post interface. Really simplified the JS/localStorage fixes suggested on Daniel’s blogblog (versus network, site): http://danielbachhuber.com/2012/05/01/notify-when-logged-out/
  
  …also worth checking out the discussion on that post too. Having the JS/storage-type fixes might be needed for full protection on mobile browsers.
Mike Bijon 12:49 am on January 13, 2013

I’d like to help with this during this cycle too.

Since I’m time-limited to being effective on only 1-2 tickets per cycle, I be happy to help with tests and testing if time there would be valuable.

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WordPress 3.6: Autosave and Post Locking

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