I don't care how you slice it, versioning a DB in git is a broken process. If you have to do this to shore up a project, it indicates the project is broken.<p>This is sold as something for big sites: "70% of WP sites in Alexa Top 1 Million" but I promise you there is no conceivable way the amount of changes we make in our WP DB could not be handled in Git.
This plugin seems to solve a problem and target a market that doesn't exist. It is also dangerous since it relies on WordPress itself being reachable in the event of catastrophe.<p>WordPress users that aren't developers don't use VMs or update their site's code frequently. Typically they either use simple hosts like Dreamhost/Media Temple or managed hosts like Pressable/WP Engine that already integrate forms of easy backup. If they don't there are a [plethora of backup plugins](<a href="http://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/free-wordpress-backup-plugins/" rel="nofollow">http://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/free-wordpress-backup-plugin...</a>) and [services](<a href="http://vaultpress.com/" rel="nofollow">http://vaultpress.com/</a>) that not only cover code but also the DB. And since these novice users rarely change their site's code, they have no reason to use version control in the first place.<p>At the other end of the spectrum, WordPress developers don't need this either. Git is pre-installed on most VMs and integrated into almost all the major cloud providers and staging sites take 10 minutes to set up. And most importantly they are abstracted from WordPress itself making them way more secure. For example, what if the admin becomes unreachable after a hack? Doesn't this defeat the entire purpose of Versionpress since you won't be able to access the plugin page to revert back? Combining backup and version control together in the WordPress admin is a recipe for disaster.<p>Lastly, whats the point of raising $30K since this is a premium plugin that's almost done anyway? If the picture isn't a rendering, then it seems like the plugin is already well under development. Isn't this more like a presale?
The huge problem I see with this is going to be when people try to do this on shared hosting, which is the largest portion of WP sites, especially the sites not updating regularly.<p>Good luck explaining git setup, ssh keys, etc. to end users who aren't devs or sysadmins.
I'm both excited and worried about it shipping as a standard WordPress plugin. What failsafes are there to guarantee that this very plugin shan't itself break after a particular update?
If you want to use version control for your theme development, there's already Roots: <a href="http://roots.io/" rel="nofollow">http://roots.io/</a>
This has been one of the biggest problems with using WordPress in a professional/team context.<p>Will you be able to branch everything so multiple people can build on it?
We use git based roll back and deployments at work. It works fantastic, but this looks like a very nice interface on top. the database versioning would be extremely useful. Definitely highlight that at the top of the page as someone else already mentioned in this thread.<p>Have you considered adding support for wp-cli commands with this. That would make automating some of the tasks very nice.
We outsourced our WordPress blogs to Pagely, and good riddance - but if they were still my problem, I'd be all over this.<p>(I still run my personal sites myself from sheer control addiction. But for <i>almost everyone</i>, outsourcing is the right answer, even just to a free wordpress.com site.)
Looks interesting! I already use Git to manage version control for my WP sites, so it's probably not for me, but it could be very helpful for those who aren't tech-savvy enough to use Git directly -- i.e. 99.999% of the WP-using population.
I need a CMS that versions media (images/video). Most just version text posts. It looks like this is one of the better options as I haven't found anything good elsewhere.
Awesome idea. In case you don't meet funding goals, please consider open sourcing the code anyway, I have no doubt a collective effort will finish polishing that plugin.