split wordpress into a completly modular file and db-table structure

[F J Kaiser]

that´s not a real feature request. just a point to start a discussion and analysis what would be necessary to achive this goal:

i see more and more cases in forums where people are using wordpress as a cms-system. so, why couldn´t be there the possibility to down-grade those parts of wp, they don´t need: posts, pages, comments, etc.

in a first step it would be enough to split the files, so you can delete them and the related tables. the most wonderful case would be, that you can choose the parts you want when you install wp and when updating, then you would only update the existing parts / modules.

[dd32]

The main problem with this is, That everything is interdependant.

The post functions are used for Pages, Media, Custom post types, etc.

The page functions account for a very small set of wrappers

The database cant really have any table removed without destroying a large section of functionality.

The only thing that can be removed that easily is Comments, and even that is becoming much more useful for more than just blog comments now..

Some functionality (Such as Post by Email) is going to be better suited to plugins, and we'll see what the Canonical plugins brings.. Infact, Pretty sure Canonical plugins pretty much mootes this ticket, Other than saying that some existing core functionality could be split into a plugin or 2.

[scribu]

Agree with dd32.

What would be interesting is the ability to extract the admin area, which is awesome, and be able to put whatever you want in it.

[F J Kaiser]

i don´t know pretty much about the function- and/or file-organisation of the core, but making the admin-area seperated from the rest would be really amazing. when i think about plugins like pods (​http://pods.uproot.us) which i use at the moment, then i see a real alternative: "blog" wordpress and "cumstom cms pods" wordpress. that would be more than great.

[sc0ttkclark]

I've seen this discussion floating around the wp-hackers list before. The ability to 'disable' entire "components" that WP uses, could potentially increase performance on sites that don't use them. I'm thinking that's where Kaiser is going with his suggestion. Deleting the tables and files isn't going to happen, just have an option to not include/use them when the site does it's require/include bootup.

[sc0ttkclark]

Another thing to keep in mind is that some people who think of this ticket could possibly be interested in BackPress instead:

​http://backpress.automattic.com/

[Denis-de-Bernardy]

I don't mean to stop the party, but... maybe close, and then re-open in 3-4 years when we've re-engineered the app inside and out a few more times?

[F J Kaiser]

@Denis: 3-4 years... That may be a little too late. Maybe just considering this, when optimzing things or deleting some of the redundant functions, would be not too bad. This way you could easily do the half of the work on the go... as long as some structure is worked out in front of it. that´s what this ticket was meant to be. sharing needs, ideas and maybe some ideas about a workflow to achieve this..

[scribu]

sharing needs, ideas and maybe some ideas about a workflow to achieve this..

This sort of broad discussion is best had on mailing lists (wp-hackers), irc and blogs.

After we've setled on a game plan, we can open tickets for specific things that need to be done.