WordPress 3.5 “Elvin” Released

There is a more technical list, including the details on the improvements for developers here:<p><a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_3.5" rel="nofollow">http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_3.5</a><p>The biggest thing I wish WordPress would add is a better built in system for real templates, using a something along the lines of Twig (<a href="http://twig.sensiolabs.org/" rel="nofollow">http://twig.sensiolabs.org/</a>).<p>That mixed PHP code and HTML in your standard WordPress template disgusts me every time I see it. I know there are some custom solutions for creating real templates in Twig, but this should be part of the mainstream WordPress branch.

The media changes are a welcome addition, but I can't help but feel Wordpress is still lacking in the media department quite a lot. One feature I've been hoping for in terms of media management is folders to organise media instead of paginating pages of all images being displayed which usually involves duplicates being displayed. I love Wordpress, but it would be great to be able to upload specific images for example of dogs into a folder called, "Dogs" and then being able to browse and manage media in said folder.<p>It's great to see Wordpress is taking steps in the right direction with every release. Another wishlist feature would be the integration of the Advanced Custom Fields plugin straight into the core which allows you to add custom meta boxes and fields to posts in a tasteful and aesthetically pleasing way. I'm excited about the future of Wordpress, it's my bread and butter and I don't see it being beat any time soon.

WordPress could really change their bad reputation by dropping support for PHP 5.2 in the next release, and requiring 5.3.<p>This would allow future WordPress developers to namespace their code, and out allow simple closures withint your code.<p>As of PHP 5.5, there is no support for a straight mySQL connection. There is no real downside in WordPress adopting the PDO standard.

Unfortunately there is still no reliable unattended upgrade process inluding rollback (aka migration) for wordpress. I looked into this a little bit, but there does not seem to be a reliable way to check if plugins have been executed successfully and with expected results or not, so you never know after an upgrade if your site is broken.<p>There are still many other issues with the code, but having a clearly defined error-handling / -signaling for plugins would be the one single change that would help in many problem areas of wordpress development - making rules and knowledge about successful plugin execution and error handling obligatory for plugin devs could be the one single change that could also help to reduce that annoying flood of unbelievable bad code to be found in WP plugins repo.

Twentytwelves mobile first approach for me is source of pain. They essentially dropped support for IE8 and below which means people in corporate environments like the company I work for who are stuck to windows xp due to other legacy software that requires it cannot view the desktop view of themes based on WordPress new default theme.

horrendous muffled voiceover on that video

Does anyone know if / when WordPress may start using a modern PHP framework (eg zf2 / symfony2)?

I wish they'd put some serious resources into dealing with comment spam. I realize it'll always be an issue, but they could at least:<p>1) not make comments enabled out of box with no anti-spam measures (moderating isn't anti-spam in my opinion: technical solutions should come before man-power)<p>2) not make me rely on third-party plugins to combat it