I don’t like to call myself a developer, but perhaps it’s because I’m in denial. I know for sure I’m not a designer, but the developer title I’d have to try a little harder to lose.

Part of development is growing. And for the past year, I think I’ve grown quite a bit, at least in the area of WordPress development. This is one of the reasons I felt like I needed to give Ajax Edit Comments another go.

Ajax Edit Comments - Initial Development

Ajax Edit Comments was the third WordPress plugin I had developed. I didn’t really know proper WordPress coding, and vaguely knew how to write a WordPress plugin. I definitely didn’t know how to properly use WordPress and Ajax together.

So I hacked, hacked, and hacked a bit more. And the end result was a decent plugin that allowed a halfway-elegant solution to editing comments.

Soon people wanted more and more features, and this time last year I released a fairly substantial upgrade. For the first time ever, WordPress admin could edit, delete, and spam comments from a post.

Ajax Edit Comments - Growing Pains

Ajax Edit Comments was not without its problems, however. I’ve received hundreds of e-mails, which I’ve tried to address them all. Some were bugs, some were support requests, and some requested new features.

Many of the problems were with theme issues, but with the current plugin setup, there really wasn’t much I could do. I’ve also been battling with various character sets.

Also, several people wrote me about the clunky admin panels, and adding support for logged-in users.

I was reluctant to add in features, simply because the plugin worked and was quite easy to use.

However, it pained me to stare at my old code and know that Ajax Edit Comments could be something so much more.

WordPress 2.5 is Released

With WordPress 2.5, a whole slew of ideas came to me. I envisioned the next Ajax Edit Comments interface, entirely independent of themes. I envisioned some nice eyecandy in the form of icons. And I envisioned adding in the features that users have requested over the past year.

Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 Codebase

The result is what I would like to call almost an entirely new plugin. Everything, and I mean everything, was written from the ground-up.

The new plugin takes advantage of WordPress built-in Ajax scripts, and also takes advantage of its brand new modal window, which you can see when you open up the Media Manager when you write a post.

The code isn’t perfect, but it’s something I’m proud of. Code is indeed poetry.

Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 Interface

AEC 2.0 Editing Options

I think the hardest part of Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 was the editing interface. It needed to be something as easy to use, but so much more powerful.

In order to keep things theme-independent, I use a modal pop-up window, which uses an iFrame. The combination results in an interface that is completely theme-independent.

AEC 2.0 Interface

I also didn’t want to clutter up the interface, so I have included an option to hide certain options. Will more be added later? Perhaps.

Why Only for 2.5?

One question I think I’ll be asked a lot is why only for WordPress 2.5?

And my response would be, “It’s time to move on.”

WordPress 2.5 is a big jump over previous versions, and it’s something the community needs to move to. It also has many features that I use extensively in the Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 codebase.

In other words, even if I wanted to develop for versions less than 2.5, I couldn’t.

So When’s the Release?

Soon

Feedback has been awesome from testers. I plan a release candidate this week, with the official release within one or two weeks depending on feedback.

I look forward to seeing what you all think of the new version.

Thanks for reading.

If you liked this post, please consider subscribing or Stumbling this post. If not, please let us know how we can better serve you.