Featured planned for upcoming versions

The following features are planned for upcoming versions of the ProcessWire core. These are not the only features planned, they are just a taste. These may be subject to change depending on team availability and priority adjustments consistent with the projects ProcessWire is used for. The dates included are ballpark estimates and may occur sooner (or later).

ProcessWire 2.3 (Winter 2012/2013)

  • Selector engine fixes, optimizations, improvements consistent with Nik's PHPUnit ProcessWire testing suite.
  • Improvements and additions to Comments fieldtype, including a global comments manager.
  • Provide option for database session storage.
  • Continued optimizations and improvements to core.
  • Support for 'required' state on Fieldtypes.
  • Improvements and additions to the installer. 
  • Secured page files option
  • Support for all jQuery traversal functions, for pages
  • Upgrades and security enhancements to the password storage
  • Support grouping for templates and fields (via tags)
  • Now remembers past locations of a page and sets up 301 redirects (via Path Path History module)
  • And more 

ProcessWire 2.4 (Summer 2013)

The primary emphasis of this version will be to update the code base to take advantage of PHP 5.3+ features. More specifically:

  • Transition to PHP namespaces. 
  • Update for compliance with PSR-0 and PSR-1.
  • Drop support for PHP 5.2. 
  • Transition from PHP's mysqli library to PDO.
  • Add support for hooks based on closures. 
  • Replacement of default site profile with a new responsive site profile.
  • Versioning for text-based page fields. 
  • Additions and improvements to module system including more dependency support, alternate configuration methods, and more.
  • Support for admin themes definable at user level.
  • And all the other improvements, additions, optimizations, and simplifications you see in every new version of ProcessWire. 

ProcessWire 2.5+ (Winter 2013/2014)

  • Support for maintaining separate draft and live versions of any page. 
  • Tools for managing server-to-server migration. 
  • Improvements to selector engine, including either-or selectors. 
  • Enhanced workflow capabilities. 
  • JS session monitoring to handle multiple users editing the same page. 
  • Pagination support with limit=1. 
  • And much more…

This roadmap will continue to be added to regularly and we try not to plan more than 2 versions ahead to remain flexible and available to support those features most needed by users as we continue to grow. 

Comments

  • Chad Dupuis

    Posted by Chad Dupuis on Dec 17, 2012 3:53 PM

    What is your overall stance on backwards compatibility? I agree with your statements about where processwire fits in relation to other packages. That said, I believe they all can be used to build just about anything, it's just what's going to be involved with upgrades/maintenance. Wordpress seems to have this process largely well controlled, drupal is the opposite end of the spectrum in my opinion where major version upgrades are difficult to put in mildly on complex sites.

  • ryan

    Posted by ryan on Dec 17, 2012 4:16 PM

    We try our best to maintain backwards compatibility when it comes to API code in your templates. If there is going to be a change to the way that the API works, then we would have a $config toggle that gives you a choice to provide old behavior. However, this has not been an issue to date, as there have not been any significant changes to API behavior. I wouldn't rule out possible changes, but it would be more likely to be in the same vein as version-to-version changes in jQuery than in other CMS products.

    Where you are more likely to encounter possible version compatibility considerations is with modules. This is because modules often rely upon hooks to components that are lower level than the API. As a result, a major PW version upgrade might also require upgrade of some 3rd party modules.

  • Jerzy

    Posted by Jerzy on Mar 1, 2013 8:11 PM

    Why are you upgrading to PHP 5.3 while there are almost 50% of web hosts still using PHP 5.2, according to http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php/5/all ? Please don't abandon PHP 5.2 so soon!

  • Webby

    Posted by Webby on Apr 18, 2013 5:03 PM

    @Jezry: I think you may use PW 2.3 together with PHP 5.2 until you ever want. But there are many improvements that _rely_ on PHP 5.3+ - from which you can not benefit, because you have no PHP 5.3 !?!

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