WordPress 4.6 Development Kicks Off This Week, Dominik Schilling to Lead Release

photo credit: Angelina Litvin

As soon as WordPress 4.5 was out the door, WordPress 4.6 release lead Dominik Schilling opened up the floor for discussion on wish list items ahead of the kickoff chat on Wednesday. The development community chimed in with feedback on their users’ biggest pain points, important UX issues to be solved, and existing features they would like to see polished.

If the 200+ comments on the post are any indication, WordPress users and contributors are buzzing with ideas for improving the software in the upcoming release. The Make/WordPress core blog doesn’t have a voting system, but a few of the wish list items with the most +1’s include:

Many-to-many relationships between posts and users (à la Posts 2 Posts)

Group ownership and content management

Custom post statuses

Multi-author support for single page/post/term items

Fix long-standing issues with wptexturize

HTTPS improvements

Add a new core media widget

Better UI for creating a “front” page

Support for allowing themes to register a static front page to be automatically turned on at activation

Remove the plugin/theme editor and make it into a plugin

Fields API

Custom Comment Types

Use bcrypt for passwords

Ella Van Dorpe also posted a summary of the most recent meeting for contributors on the core editor component. The team discussed a wish list for the editor in 4.6 and beyond, including the possibility of creating a feature plugin that uses ICE to allow suggestions and comments on content. A revamp of the Publish meta box, more experimentation with inline toolbars, more formatting shortcodes, and other improvements are also on the list.

Weston Ruter and contributors plan to continue chipping away at the customizer roadmap and component page with a focus on customizer transactions. Ruter would also like to introduce basic content authorship in the customizer in 4.6, along with improvements to existing features.

The 4.6 wish list offers a small preview of what might be coming in this release, and there’s still time to contribute new items and feedback. If you want to advocate for your ticket or wish list item, join the WordPress 4.6 kickoff chat in the #core Slack channel on Wednesday at 3:00PM CDT.