A repository is just a fancy way for saying a place to store your data much like an FTP server. What makes using one so important is that you create versions of files so that you can always roll back if you make mistakes. The WordPress.org site contains some very good information on How To Use Subversion to create / contribute to a plugin…if you are a fan of command line tools. Some people probably prefer that approach – just like using vi as a text editor. However, I find graphical based user interfaces easier and more efficient to use.

This tutorial is for those who – like me – use Dreamweaver for web development and want to maintain their plugin code on the WordPress repository through it. For those who use Eclipse, you can follow a similar process using SubClipse. The two key pieces of the puzzle are:

• TortoiseSVN – An SVN client for Windows that makes version management simple.
• SubWeaver – A Dreamweaver extension to integrate SVN commands through Tortoise.

Setup your WordPress.org account and plugin repository

The first thing you will want to do is go to WordPress.org > Extend > Plugins and register for an account. The contact information (name, email, website, etc) you provide will show up with any plugins that you create or contribute to.

Since you’re on the site and ready to start your first plugin, go to the Add a Plugin form and provide the appropriate details (name, description, url). Note that it may take 24 – 48 hours for your plugin request to be approved, but this will create a new repository for your plugin.

Install Tortoise and SubWeaver

Download and install Tortoise SVN from http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org. You will have to restart your computer for the changes to take effect.  After that has completed, you will want to download and install Subweaver from http://code.google.com/p/subweaver/

When you are looking at the file explorer in Dreamweaver, you will now see a new SubWeaver sub-menu that I will explain the primary uses of it as we go along.

Create a local repository

You will need a folder on your hard drive to store the plugin files / folders. Find the folder in Windows Explorer and right-click on it to select SVN Checkout. You will have to add the repository information which was specified when you completed the Add a Plugin form. The repository path should start with http://svn.wp-plugins.org/ as the image at right shows for Idealien Category Enhancements.

You could do this through Dreamweaver directly, however I prefer to do the initial checkout by Tortoise so that when I create the site in Dreamweaver it already contains the standard SVN structure.

Understanding the structure of a repository

There are 3 different locations where you can place code which are loosely based on the analogy of a tree:

• Trunk represents the area where your active development goes. When starting your plugin, it will be where you add your first files. It is the latest and greatest so might not be ready for public consumption.
• Tags are for specific versions of your plugin. Any time you commit significant changes to your trunk (i.e. a new version) you should create a new tag and update the readme.txt file to indicate what the newest release is. I have gotten into the habit of developing on a separate WP installation (easier for testing, debug, etc) and as a result the code in the trunk usually mirrors the most up to date tag available.
• Branches are for working on enhancements or code you would like others to beta test or build in isolation of other functionality. When you’re satisfied with a particular branch, you will have to merge the changes into the trunk. Smaller scope plugins usually won’t use branches.

Or as the wordpress.org site puts it:

Each time you make a formal release of your plugin, you should tag a copy of that release’s code. This lets your users easily grab the latest (or an older) version, it lets you keep track of changes more easily, and lets the WordPress.org Plugin Directory know what version of your plugin it should tell people to download.

Add, Modify, Delete or just Commit!

You now have a link between the repository and your local computer. Work with the files on your local PC until you are satisfied and ready to commit them to the repository.

• Highlight all of the files that you have modified.
• Right click and chose to SubWeaver > Commit
• Dreamweaver will show you the SVN log in which it compares every file on your PC against the repositor and the action (add, modify, delete) it did to the version in the repository as well.
• If you want to ensure you don’t miss anything, select the top-level folder for your plugin and then commit. Note that if you do this and you have added / deleted any files, you will have to specifically check their checkbox under the changes made window.

The update process on the repository server will take a few minutes to show up in the Plugin Directory.

Updates and Merges

The work scenario I described above is written on the assumption that you are the only one editing files for your plugin. If you are collaborating on another plugin, before you start to work on changes you will want to execute an SVN update to ensure you have pulled the latest files from the server to your local PC.

It is possible (read: likely) that at some point in time you will encounter a scenario where someone else has updated the files which you are working on in between when you updated your files and when you went to commit. You now must merge your changes with theirs which is the bane of many developers. While Tortoise / SubWeaver do have tools built in to compare files, I have found that WinMerge is a better tool built specifically for this task. You can install it and configure it with Tortoise under the Settings > External Programs menu.

These really are worth 2,000 words!

This release will feature form AND function improvements

When version 2.5 of WordPress was released there was a lot of uproar in the community, most of which was based on the fact that the admin panel changes felt to be change for the sake of change. You still:

• Needed two clicks to get from anywhere to writing a new page
• Only had a limited amount of real estate horizontally for plugins to put their options screens.
• Depended on great plugins to make the admin interface significantly more usable.

With 2.7 – and the integration of the usability test efforts codenamed Crazyhorse – you are beginning to see the fruits of Automattic’s effort to support people who have been using WordPress as a  robust platform for more than just writing blogs. The WordPress 2.7 admin wireframes released late in September gave a taste of this, but the real reason I say this has less to do with the screenshots above and more to do with the demonstration I mentioned earlier.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the video from that event made it online, but WTC has a good starting list of the great things you can expect from this release. With a little less than a month to go before the planned release date of November 10th, I’m sure there will be a flurry of activity and beta releases to have a chance to get hands-on experience with the new UI. I am excited to get the opportunity to use it and can already think of a number of ways in which I will be able to leverage the new form / function:

• Reposition the admin panels which my clients use most into places where it is easy for them to use.
• Turn-off all of the interface panels which they never use and need not know about.
• Integration of the plugin repository functionality into the plugin installation area.
• More image size options – a very important thing for those who use WP for portfolios, product display, etc.
• On the non-admin side – THREADED COMMENTS!

Between these tidbits of information and the recent announcements that Automattic has acquired IntenseDebate and PollDaddy, it seems like 2008 is going to finish on a very high note!

What are the benefits of Flashpress?

There are things which Flash does very well, particularily interactivity and branded user experience, which the php / css platform of WordPress has a hard time replicating. By the same token, the strengths of state of the art publishing platform known overlap very closely with the weaknesses of Flash. It is user friendly, easy to install, update and extend. The tagline for Flashpress is better than any description I could give, “Briding the best of both worlds. Imagine if you could easily update flash and provide a WordPress installation with the interactive experience that only Flash could offer”.

Understanding how Flashpress works

For those who are already excited by the prospect of this plugin, there is a flash slideshow on Brendan’s site that explains the process in detail. At a high-level, the process which the will be executed when a user requests a page from a site using this plugin is:

• Flashpress requests XML data from WordPress
• WordPress retrieves the data from the database
• Flashpress sends that XML data to Flash
• Flash both creates an instance of the page template and loads the data into it
• The interactive elements are then applied and a user can initiate another action
• The cycle gets repeated

I sent Brendan a series of questions by e-mail that he was kind enough to take the time to answer to get more information out about Flashpress, its history, status and future.

When / how did you come up with the idea to write a completely new front-end user interface for WordPress in Flash?

Just over a year ago, I decided to start a PHP user group in Toronto. There was no functioning group, and I had over 90 students in my PHP class at Seneca (School of Communications Arts, Digital Media Arts Program), and many were excited to be a part of this. We had a few meetings and were looking for a project to get it all started. I had mentioned we should do some WordPress plugins, because all my students where familiar with since I was teaching WordPress development in class. At the same time I was getting this user group (UG) together, I was still very involved in the Flash community, and thought about ways I could more designers interested in WordPress…and then….it just came to me…what if I merge Flash and WordPress togther, then I can get the best of both worlds.

So, I discussed it with my students, they liked the sound of. I and suggested that we take it one step further and build and entire Flash site using WordPress as the backend cms.  This is one of the major problems in the Flash industry. It costs a lot to develop a site in Flash and then it costs almost as much to maintain it. A lot of our students go freelance and want to build Flash, but can’t get smaller clients to pay. So I thought this could be the answer. Make it easy to update and manage. Plus, we bridge two worlds, open source and commercial projects, and we get more developers and designers to work together. Which is PHUG’s philosophy. Any ways, long story short I came up with the name FlashPress and it eventually became a PHUG project.

The primary developers for the plugin now are Alex Nasser and Logan Aube (from www.bogaroo.com)

What is the status of the project? How much is WordPress 2.7 affecting the development?

This is an interesting question. WP has changed many times since the inception of FlashPress. However, most changes have been made to the look and feel of the dashboard, security issues, and better management of content. Luckily, they have not changed the DB architecture or core files enough, and some cases not at all, to affect FlashPress. 2.7 is a different story, there are some changes that may affect development, but at this point it has not been an issue. we will continue to develop along the same roadmap, and we are ready to distribute it, we figure people will contribute to areas they feel have not yet been covered. Like any good open source project, we will never be finished.

How much customization will one be able to do to the UI? How much flash will one have to know?

This has always been a big topic of debate for us. Initially the project was geared mostly towards Flash developers. This is for 2 reasons:

1. We felt there was a greater need in the Flash community for a Flash driven CMS.
2. Most of the code to make this work is AS. We have had to write many custom AS libraries to get WordPress to communicate with Flash the way we want it to. The PHP end was simple, WP only needed a couple lines of code to pass date to Flash, however, Flash requires more, we need to parse all the incoming data, re-organize it, and make sure it is displayed correctly.

Now to answer your question, We have decided that it would be best for this project to be accessible for both Flash and WordPress developers, meaning, we are trying very hard to ensure that as a WP developer, you will not have to play with the AS in Flash, unless they want to. It will be mostly design work and everything can be handled in WP. However, we want to make sure that both ends of the app are open source, so that either a Flash or WP developer can extend the AS and PHP to add more functionality. We have discussed heading in an interesting direction, allowing contributors on both ends to continue developemt and meet somewhere in the middle for the final distribution. It also depends which community picks up on this more.

Could this also be used to build a UI in Flex since they compile to the same native code base?

Yes! In fact currently most of development team have been using Flex and FlashDevelop. We tend not stay out of the Flash IDE. The idea is to make completely open source accessible.

What functionality will be in version 1.0? What is on the whiteboard fo version 2.0?

Version 1 is essentially going to cover all the basics. You will be able to use FlashPress to generate and manage all content in a Flash site. So, this means the ability to create, edit, and manage all
pages, posts, and media. Version 2, will be a whole new bundle. It will hopefully allow for anything Flash and Wp related. This willl also depend on our contributors and the success of our community and project.

A key element on the whiteboard for version 2 is a complete installable bundle. This will have all the necessities, including plugins, special modules, sample sites, .flas and so on. We want FlashPress to be as easy to download, install, and run, as WP is now. One other things to mention: We are hoping to add some really cool open source flash tools to the bundle. The abbility to easily create red5 apps, papervision3d development, and AIR.

If anyone wants to learn more about FlashPress, PHUG are running FREE workshops about it – schedule details are available through the PHUG website or workshops.phug.ca. Presenters will upload their presentations and files there for those who miss the chance to attend. Plus this gives people the ability to continue to talk about it and share. You can also get more info at flashpressdevelopers.com

A big thanks very much for taking the time both to answer my questions and instigate the development of such a great plugin. I look forward to being able to use it when it’s launched.