WPFF Plugin
Just uploaded my first WordPress Fast Frontend plugin to the WPFF test site. It was a good learning experience and pretty simple to write. The plugin reproduces the category-based styles I have set up on my normal WP site which is a quick hack rather than a plugin. Once I port over my keywords/tags plugin then my WPFF site will be fully functional.
The new plugin architecture was somewhat tricky to figure out sans documentation, but very simple to write for once I grasped the basic structures. The default plugins are great to learn from and you only need to know a few hooks to get one to work. My stock WP plugin experience is limited to the backend, so I won’t comment on which is better (probably an “apples to oranges” comparison anyhow).
I still owe Ludo a response regarding the template system, but that will have to wait for another day…
Ok, WPFF feedback - here goes:
1. Templates can be tricky to work with. If you don't set a value for a template tag or block then that tag/block shows up as-is from the .xml file: e.g. {url_option}. The html comment tags that start/end blocks are also displayed in the end result. Coding-wise, it's not a very flexible system since you have to match your block setup code with the actual template blocks. I've brought up Smarty before which has a cleaner approach from the coding side: you can assign arrays (nested, even) to the template which are automatically parsed as blocks - no extra block setup code. I agree that Smarty is overkill in many cases (it reimplements too many coding structures) but it's a joy to use within a PHP script.
2. Missing Features - I'd like to see support for the other feed formats (I'm assuming it's just a matter of adding new feed templates); - more consistency with WP especially in the areas of permalinks and index.php request keys; - perhaps search support (even if it's just a wrapper for the WP search functions); - and this is the big one, being able to display "nice" markup without all the preprocessing that WP does.
That last one is a big performance hit in WP. Basically all posts are stored in the database in raw text format and then are processed on-demand to include paragraph blocks, smart quotes, etc. I understand why the WP devs did it that way, since it makes the editing side much easier. WPFF shouldn't have any heavy-duty preg processing, so what I'd suggest is a back-end WP plugin to save the pretty version (and maybe sort out the editing of that version too) so that WPFF can keep doing what it does best.
That's probably ten cents rather than two, but they're my ten.
jerome — 17-Feb-2005 21:30Oh, and cached templates. Caching is good.
jerome — 17-Feb-2005 21:35Hmmm, my first comment looked better in stock WP than in WPFF.
jerome — 17-Feb-2005 21:39at 11:12:40 CET by ludo Jerome just published a few suggestions on future developments, and features he would like to see implemented [...]
Wordpress Fast Frontend » Templates, WP compatibility, etc. — 18-Feb-2005 03:12deciso di utilizzare Word Press Fast Frontend per il proprio blog, e sta partecipando con brainstorming architetturali e patch. E dato che le cose non vengono mai da sole (e spesso chi tr [...]
blogo.it - I vantaggi della trasparenza — 18-Feb-2005 14:53