How do we decide what goes into each release of MainWP?

Releases
1

Lately, I realized that I have never laid out exactly how we decide what goes in each release of MainWP, and at times it has been haphazard, so let’s go over the basic hierarchy of MainWP release decisions.

Let me start by giving credit where credit is due since we began using Discourse for our community I’ve become a fan of Jeff Atwood [codinghorror] co-founder of https://www.discourse.org and the philosophy he used while developing the Discourse software.

Anyone who wants an overview of my current outlook of MainWP development and what gets into a release should read Jeff’s blog post:

While I won’t be doing everything as laid out in the post, I do plan to make decisions following the underlining theories presented there.

Decisions will primarily break down as follows:

  • Priorities

  1. Security issues as brought to our attention
  2. If it’s a bug, how many people are reporting the bug.
  3. If it’s a feature request, how many users are requesting it.
  4. Of those requesting the feature, how many are paying customers (get your pro badge).
  5. How many people does the MainWP team feel this would help.
  6. What does the MainWP team think about this feature request.

Priorities are ranked from strongest (#1) to weakest (#6). However, even this can change, when it comes to points 2-6 based on internal discussion, who’s and how many are being affected by a bug (is this an edge case), and how much actual time would go into adding a feature compared to return to the customer base.

For example:

A security issue will always be prioritized before anything else, However, if it’s a bug only affecting edge cases versus a feature that can help many people, while also being requested by paying customers that will outrank the edge case bug.

  • We reserve the right to be wrong.

We can revisit decisions at latter dates and even change them if we were wrong. It happens.

  • MainWP is open source.

Make MainWP your own and make the changes you need.

If you don’t like something, submit a pull request or create an Extension for it.

“We need not wait to see what others do.” – Mahatma Gandhi"

We are here to help you with any issues, just ask!

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