Unsurprisingly, the future of WordPress is important to us and we care about it a lot. We actively worked with it for almost six years now and thought it would probably be good to share our vision for it. Below is a list of our recommendations, followed by a list of things we want WordPress to be stripped off in this spring cleanup.
6 Recommendations:
1. Embrace Mobile-first Approach
Mobile-first doesn’t mean showing and hiding elements on different screen sizes. It means you build the design from phablet-sized screen and scale it further.
2. Fix Community Ideas Faster
Just follow the top rated Ideas and fix them faster. So many users can’t be wrong.
3. Stop Recommending Framework Libraries
Articles, like this one are harming the developer community. There should be standalone themes, theme frameworks and child themes and plugins. Find our response to this subject here.
4. Make Child Themes Disposable
Design changes over years and so should your website. Child themes should thus be disposable and horror like grandchild themes should never exist.
5. Flatter Modern Design
WordPress looks OK as is, but it should step a bit further and embrace a flat, modern design with no borders and as little shadows as possible. A bit more white space couldn’t hurt.
6. User-selected Archive Pages for All Post Types
There should be a way for selecting static archive pages for all post types, not just Front page and Posts page. This would make WordPress even more CMS-friendly and intuitive to use.
4 Spring Cleanups:
1. Buddypress
WordPress is not a social network, it is a CMS system, evolved from blogging platform. Get rid of Buddypress.
2. Press This
Stop the madness. WordPress shouldn’t sponsor content spamming and copyright theft.
3. Post Formats
Tumblr is great, but WordPress is now a CMS system, not just a blogging platform anymore. Stop limiting and forcing post formats and make post formats the same way as custom post types are built or scrap them altogether.
4. Widgets, Menus, Header, Background
Move widgets, menus, header and background control from Appearance to Customizer.
Our recommendations probably don’t reflect the desires of every WordPress power user and I’m sure you have your own suggestions as well, so please share in the comments below.
Hi Željan,
Interesting article I agree with mos the things you say but not sure what you have against WordPress recommending frameworks? I personally have no issue with that.
Also the current WordPress admin area is a opportunity for developers just look what Jason as done to the admin area: http://jason.sc/pickle-tour
Thank you for your feedback. Frameworks are great, but not as framework libraries, where you have to insert framework code into your theme. We strongly recommend frameworks in form of parent/base themes, like our Bizznis. Bizznis powers our premium child themes and is a base for our premium plugins. Updating and maintaining the code is much easier and a lot better. Imagine the process of updating 30 themes with framework libraries in them. We also added a response to this terrible idea Justin streamlined.
I agree on the admin part, but the one you recommended copies the current WordPress Customizer, so it definitely isn’t built by WordPress standards. It is a nice concept though. Customizer is really great, but the admin area, not so much.