WordPress Console Update

It’s been awhile since I posted about my open-source WordPress Console (WPC) plugin, and enough has happened since I released it that I thought it deserved a little mention.

What’s New

1. Basic Security

Thanks to Apokalyptik, the back-end PHP scripts now require a shared secret from the console before executing any code. As he so eloquently described it:

As is the plugin is negligently insecure (but outstandingly cool and useful and I want this plugin to be installable, thus the patch)

Even though the increased security is a huge improvement from what we had before, I still wouldn’t run the plugin on production servers.

2. Tab-Completion

This is the biggest functional improvement to WPC by far. It was a feature that I wanted to release the plugin with initially, but it didn’t make the cut because I wanted to release early. The best thing about tab-completion is that it allows you to explore the PHP & WP environments in a very fulfilling way. If you haven’t tried the plugin with this feature, please give it a go.

3. Small Things

WPC now handles command history with more grace. Using the up-arrow puts the cursor at the end of input, you can’t walk off the end of the history buffer, and a few other improvements to the code quality.

Some Press

Thanks to Doug Neiner for giving WPC a solid review on the Fuel Your Coding blog, and for contributing to the project.

What’s Next

I’m not really sure.

I’ve considered adding in-console documentation for PHP & WP functions, but not sure if people would use it much. I also have a command-line version of the console which I could spit shine and include with the plugin, but that might not be too attractive either. Maybe the plugin is as good as done. Any ideas or suggestions?