Here’s a quick example:

[php]
add_action('admin_init', 'add_my_settings_field');

}


In WordPress 2.7 admin pages are made of pages, sections and fields. In the above example I have added a new field to the writing page (Settings > Writing) in the default section.

This not only creates the table rows and table header for the form field, it also saves the value for you. The above code is everything you need to add the new question.

The value can be accessed again using get_option(‘my_field_id’).

You could just as easily add it to the remote_publishing section, by changing the last attribute in the add_settings_field function in the example to ‘remote_publishing’.

If you take a look at the options-writing.php page in wp-admin you will see that beneath each section there is a function, do_settings_fields, that lists the page and the section in its arguments; i.e. do_settings_fields(‘writing’, ‘remote_publishing’)

These tell you the settings you need to add fields in that part of the page.

I think this is a very important step in helping to reduce the clutter in WordPress, no longer will a new admin page be needed for a single setting if it could sit in an existing page.

It really does bring to mind again the question of what features are really needed in WordPress so I decided to list out the features that actually I don’t think I would use now, even if I might once have used them.

In doing this I was quite surprised to find that there are only two features that I could happily live without: Links / Blogroll and Widgets.

Links seems to be a particularly outmoded concept to me. I’m not sure I have ever used this. I know there are people that do, but I wonder how much of this functionality is replicated in a widget. Do you you this?

For me, I find Widgets actually get in the way. There are a lot of people that are not comfortable with editing the sidebar manually and for them widgets are a good idea, but if you are, or can become comfortable with it you will find that the widget system actually just gets in the way. I know a lot of people use plugins to add widgets that let them insert PHP code that could just as easily be added to the theme or sidebar.

Of course there are lots of little things that I don’t use, but these seem to be the only major things, which begs the question: why does WordPress feel like there are loads of unused features in it when there really aren’t?

Admin Stuff

There is a new option in each post screen that allows the uselss crap you never use to be removed, leaving only a nice clean interface. The fact that drag and drop is back also means that you can order what’s left to create a start to finish workflow (or should that be WordFlow?). My entire post screen now looks something like this:

It is also now possible to reply to comments from the admin panel. choosing to reply to a comment brings up a nice floating box for your well thought out reply.

It is finally possibly, god knows why this wasn’t always available, to upload files from the media manager instead of having to create a new post.

And lastly a new quick edit option allows some of the core settings of posts and pages to be altered from the manage page. These are settings such as the page title, slug, publication status, whether it can accept comments or trackbacks, as well as categories and tags.

Development Stuff

For a long time I have thought that WordPress was missing functionality when it comes to the site menu. Every theme has one and yet the controls for it are woeful. The new function wp_page_menu() will generate the HTML for the menu including customisable home page text (if you want the home page included), the option to specify a class, change a sort order or to get the result as a string instead of echoing it.

This is a step in a direction, but it is very basic and some might want more from it. As a basic theme template tag it is the right choice though. It fits in with the rest of the WordPress theme template tags in philosophy and output and will remove some of the development burden for theme authors that aren’t really familiar with PHP.

[php]
wp_page_menu('show_home=Home&menu_class=menu);


WordPress 2.7 will support threaded comments by default and with that comes a template tag to take the work out of outputing those comments.

[php]
wp_list_comments($comment);


This is interesting to me for a few reasons. Firstly it rolls up the default comment HTML into the function, so while you can overide this I think it is likely that it will mean less variation in the way comments are marked-up. Most people tend to copy the default theme anyway but some themes do vary alot. The second reason is that to overide the comment HTML you include a function name to call instead. This means that even if you want to use different HTML it may be best placed in the functions.php file or at least in a separate file that the functions.php calls as an include. Either way it helps to keep the templates cleaner.

I have already written about the plugin uninstall mechanism so I won’t go into that again but it is interesting. Back in the days of 2.3 there was a lot of interest in this, promted by an article on weblog tools collection, and my posts on the subject still recieve a fair degree of attention.

It goes without saying that things could change either a little or a lot before 2.7 comes out, and I am sure there is more to come. In the meantime I would to hear about the things that you are most looking foward to about 2.7. What is your favourite new features?

This is the view that awaited me:

Each of the menu items on the left open and close as needed. Templates contains everything that is in the design tab now. Utilities features the new inbox (which seems to include notifications about WordPress and maybe new comments, but it doesn’t do anything yet) and some of the contents of the manage menu.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about it yet as I haven’t had much time to try it out, but there is a limit to how many admin changes people should accept so whatever happens with it lets hope they stick with it for a while. Personally I think the admin should be black (black is the new light blue).

The article looks at a paper which argues that the suggestion that a greater number of features equals lower usability and that fewer features equals greater usability is a false assumption that needs to be challenged.

The point of the article is ultimately to state that what people want is more capability and easier to use products.

What I find interesting about the argument between simplicity and features is that sometimes they both actually reduce the capability.

Take widgets for example. Widgets exist to make it easier to quickly change the contents of your sidebar. But, once you start using widgets you are also constrained by them.

How often are you asked by someone how they get a widget that replicates a particular template tag?

Before widgets it would be a case of adding the tag to the sidebar code. Users would be forced to learn how. But with widgets you don’t need to learn how to do this, or you want it in a position that the widgets won’t let you add manually, so you are constrained.

I have a theory that the more development that is done on a product like WordPress the lower the barrier for use is. This, in turn, means that more features are needed to help users accomplish things that they don’t have the technical knowledge to do themselves. This adds to the complexity which reduces usability and leads to the need for simplification. This reduces the options.

The process brings in new users and provides capability to a larger number of users, but at the same time the overall capability of the product and its user base gradually lowers making way for a new product to meet the needs of the more technically competent.

Version 0.5 of Habari was released in July with a new interface. While WordPress 2.5’s admin update was an improvement Habari is on another level, but first things first.

Installation

WordPress has been famous for its simple installation but it’s amongst the last that still requires files to be manually edited. Habari comes with an installation routine that asks for the database information and even offers a choice of default plugins.

First Use

The first login to Habari comes with a full page explanation of what to do next. It explains the user interface and gives some tips for how to get right in.

There has clearly been a lot of thought given to the way Habari is used. Just looking at the sheer number of links in the Manage section of the WordPress admin screen makes me wonder how Habari can have so few and yet not be obviously missing anything that I want.

Posting

The most impressive thing for me is the post screen. It is empty until you ask to be shown more. Take a look at this:

This is quite a contrast to the WordPress post screen.

Depending on how much of WordPress’s functionality you actually use you might find some things missing, but if you just want to write and publish, well then it is ideal. It also has great integration with Flickr.

One of the best things about Habari at the moment, from a users point of view, is the lack of features. How it will change as extras are added remains to be seen but it shows a great deal of potential.

I will post more as I experiment with it. I plan on writing some test themes and plugins to explore the code side but what I know about it already makes me think I will enjoy the experience. For now it is probably enough to say “Watch out WordPress!”

For a few years now we have been hearing about the move away from the desktop. Software as a service, web 2.0, thin clients, this and all the talk of Google competing with Microsoft Office. So it is interesting to see blogs actively developing connections to move software that started out on the web back onto the desktop.

So what does this tell us?

It tells us in the first instance something we already knew: that the web contains more hype than substance. But it also tells us that real people are not ready to work solely on the net.

The important thing though is to ask ‘why?’.

Is it because it is not possible to create a compelling web experience? Perhaps, but somehow I doubt that.

Is it because most people’s experience of the web experience is poor, and so they don’t trust it? More likely.

Is it because the net is still a fundamentally new thing and most people don’t really have that much contact with it? Almost certainly a contributing factor.

For me the advantages of WordPress, or any blogging system come to think of it, is that it doesn’t require desktop software. For all the great things I have heard about Windows Live Writer I still don’t want to use it and I think the fact that anyone does want to use it is no so much to do with the great work that has gone into it but more a failure to develop the experience people want, or to explain the benefits, or something else that I haven’t yet thought of.

What about you? Do you use a desktop client? if so which one and why? Tell us what you think is wrong with WordPress.