3 Key Features That Should Already Be in WordPress Core

WordPress is almost infinitely extensible through plugins. That makes up a huge part of its appeal.

Due to that extensibility, WordPress core developers constantly have to make myriad decisions on exactly what should be ‘in’ core, and what should remain as a plugin option. And that’s where the problems can start for some, as functionality that we might reasonably expect to exist in core simply doesn’t. While going in search of a high quality plugin might not be too difficult a task, simply having the necessary functionality exist in core – with all its inherent quality of code and security – would be a better alternative.

As a compromise to the above issue, in this post we highlight three key pieces of functionality that we believe should be in core, and then offer the best plugin solutions available on the market today. It’s not an ideal solution, but until we can convince core developers that they’re missing out on a trick, it’ll have to do!

1. Post Scheduling

Once your post is ready to be shown to the world, WordPress gives you the option to schedule it for a later date. However, once it has been scheduled, there is no easy way to keep track of all your future scheduled posts in an easy to read format.

Multi-author WordPress blogs have an even harder time tracking the status of each post, not to mention handling the scheduling.

The default functionality for publishing and scheduling posts in WordPress alone is just not user-friendly, and can lead to plenty of mistakes. While there are several good plugins that can handle post scheduling, there is currently nothing in the WordPress core that is sufficient.

A calendar view of post schedules where editors can drag and drop articles would be a nice feature included in the WordPress core release. For now, you’ll have to make do with Edit Flow or Editorial Calendar, both of which are excellent options.

2. Easy Comments Disablement

While commenting is often an integral part of blogging, not every website wants or needs this option.

Currently, site administrators have the option to disable comments on individual pages and posts, as well as future posts and pages, which works for some websites. However, there is not a good option for globally disabling comments across all posts (historical or otherwise), or even an entire site.

Many site owners struggle to eliminate spam comments for media pages, posts, etc., since WordPress does not offer a global disable feature, while other administrators may forget to turn comments off from one post to the next. Others may be looking to clean up older posts on their site and turn off commenting.

While there are some very good plugins that can help solve this problem (the appropriately named Disable Comments being my favorite), global disabling of comments should be delivered in the WordPress core.

3. A Visual Editor for Text Widgets

WordPress users are spoiled with the visual editor option that is available for both posts and pages. When it comes to posts and pages, users have the ability to insert rich text and media objects into a visual editor or through HTML mode.

However, when adding text widgets to your blog, the visual editor option is not available. The WordPress core default for text widgets requires basic HTML knowledge in order to add formatted content. This may work for those that have a basic understanding of HTML, but certainly not for everyone.

There are plugins that can be added to your WordPress site which can help fix this problem (enter Black Studio TinyMCE Widget), but it would be nice if the core installation included a visual editor for text widgets.

WordPress is Still the Best!

Despite a few shortcomings, WordPress is still the best blogging platform and content management system available today. With zero money down (hosting and other related costs aside), users can have a blog, website, or even an e-commerce storefront up and running in no time.

While there are plenty of features we would like to see added to the WordPress core release, plugins and themes usually make up for most of what is missing, which ain’t so bad.

Would you like to see the items listed above added to the WordPress core? What other items are still missing from the WordPress core release that you would like to be added? Let us know in the comments below!

Image Credit: Aaron Burden

Also read: 7 Common WordPress Issues and How to Fix Them