Slowly but surely i’m modifying the theme to add extra functionality or make it easier to read.
I’m trying to bring some more colour into the site, And the front-page is going to be getting a make-over at some point in time..
I’m also syncing the site with WordPress 2.7 trunk every few days (As i have been for the past few months), 2.7′s coming along pretty nicely, the Admin design is really starting to grow on me too :) – I dont think i could use the 2.3 or 2.5/6 style interfaces again..
Once again, I’ve been selected to take part in the Google Summer of Code. This year my aim is to complete the work on the Trac Ticket #6015. In short: Allow plugin installations directly from the WordPress administration interface
As usual, I’ve allready started working on the coding previous to this week, and as such, do have some code to show for my efforts, However, My personal aim is to get an API off the ground for the WordPress Plugin Respositories before releasing any code which could utilise it.
Work so far:
- API: So far i’ve drafted up a first scratch at designing a flexible API which returns the details needed for the search, as well as details for other projects which wish to access the data. It’d be run over a serialized post request the same as the current API’s, My iniial thoughts of objects can be found here: http://dd32.id.au/files/soc2008/pi_api_test2.html i’d appreciate input from others on that, What is missing, Whats needed, etc.
- UI: I’ve not released any code for the UI yet, I’d prefer to get the API implemented and returning useable information ASAP before any UI feedback comes in, This is initially to allow the UI to have access to the data that it needs. (RSS can only provide limited details). A Quick mockup of the UI which relies on RSS details is shown below:
So, List of items achieved this week:
- API Design
- Basic UI design
- Rather large chunk of work on the WP_Filesystem abstraction to fit in with recent changed to trunk
- Looked at a change in UI for the plugins table to fit in better with being able to install a large number of plugins, A Delete/Uninstall option might be needed on the plugins page, As well as seperating it into 2 tables, “Currently Active plugins” and “Available Plugins”. 2 tables does not make much sense in the 2.5 world with people usually only having plugins installed which they need, But with the ability to search and install plugins, a larger number of people may end up with a list of 20 or so plugins which they have available, yet do not use, which could fill the active plugins table up..
And finally:
If you have any input on anything mentioned here within, Or anything mentioned in this Google Groups post, please do leave a comment with your thoughts :)
Following on from the Plugin upgrader, I feel it would be beneficial to also allow plugins to be installed from the wordpress web interface directly from WordPress.org
I propose to extend the API on wordpress.org to allow for plugin querying(select a list of plugins based upon tags, plugin name, and/or search term, as well as select featured, popular, or recently updated which are currently availale via a RSS feed)
As well as adding a “Plugin Install” tab on the Plugins page of WordPress.
Part of the work has been quickly scratched together on the Trac ticket by myself: http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6015 however was only Proof of concept, and only works with plugins which are currently delivered by a RSS Feed.
I intend on working on the ticket and submitting patches to the WordPress core code for 2.6.
I invision the plugin installation page having a set of tabbed headings accross the page(Or as a side menu) to select the area to grab plugins from, Eg:
| Featured | Popular | Recently Updated | Tagged | Search |
And a table similar to the plugins page listing a page of plugins which matches the criteria.
I would expect the page to be Paged to 50 items or so to a page to allow quick skimming of lists, as well as not having too many pages to filter through.
The Tabs would be hookable, So a plugin can add an extra plugin source, or remove a source depending on the blogs intended uses.
See Also:
Wp-hackers: Idea for a GSoC project http://groups.google.com/group/wp-hackers/browse_thread/thread/c759db798b244121/b8451c1d7b670085?lnk=gst