So I’ve been working pretty extensively with WordPress lately, and I’ve run into a few annoyances while customizing WordPress for clients I work with. These arn’t really showstoppers but just makes customizing WordPress harder than it should. I think the core foundation is pretty solid for the most part, but there’s those tiny little things that I’ve had to dig around in the source code for a bit to find workarounds. And when I say “Can’t customize X…” I mean that it’s not possible to easily customize X without touching the core WordPress codebase.

Without further ado, here’s my list:

• If you’ve got some custom Apache level redirects, then the WordPress generated .htaccess may very well clobber these redirects.
• Inconsistent CSS classes/IDs in the administration area.
• Can’t customize the Login page
• Can’t customize the native WordPress uploading widget. No hooks or filters.
• Can’t customize the admin dashboard
• Can’t customize the admin workflow. For example, I want the user to always be taken back to the dashboard after a new post has been made. Or, I want the user to be taken to a general “Overview” page which explains the different screens when a user clicks the “Manage” tab.
• Sorting pages is a bit tedious, especially if you have a site with a lot of pages. I think some script.aculo.us usage could go a long way in this regard.
• Adding extra options/plugins to the bundled TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor is harder than it should be.
• The Loop - reliance on global variables. It’s tricky to do multiple post loops on a page while still keeping the context for the page you’re on (like for an archive page). What will happen if you’re not careful is that the page context will switch over to the last post you just looped through.
• There’s no breadcrumb template tag

This list refers to the WordPress 2.0 distribution. For the most part, I think WordPress is pretty awesome (it’s what runs this site). It’s simple and intuitive enough such that there’s not much training that needs to happen to get people started on it. And for all the issues I listed above, I’ve already found work arounds by writing my own custom plugins without modifying the core WordPress distribution. That’s really the one redeeming thing about WordPress, there are enough action hook points to allow me to do almost anything… even if it can get a bit hackish and ugly.

In anycase, thanks to the WordPress dev team for all their hard work and keep those releases coming!