Now, here is the other news that I’m sure some people are anxious to hear about: the next version of Manga+Press,which is 2.7. First off, I’m done with school so that means more time to work on the plugin. Second off, I’m going to completely rework the code from scratch—make it more modular, more flexible than the current version. The other part to that is I have to maintain backwards compatibility. Finally, because of the amount of changes, I’m going to advance the version number to 3.0. Hey, might as well The ETA I have for releasing Manga+Press 2.7 3.0 will be sometime in August, possibly middle of August.

And no, I haven’t forgot about CharacterWiki. I just can’t offer an ETA on it yet.

The problem is Manga+Press is going to have to be re-written entirely for 3.0, and I have to figure out a way of maintaining some backwards compatibility.

/Update: March 19th, 3:17pm

Yes, Manga+Press 2.7 will definitely have to be rewritten for WordPress 3.0. The custom post types and taxonomies are going to play a powerful role in 2.7, and now that I’m thinking about it, custom post types will play a part in the companion plug-in called CharacterWiki. Or, CharacterWiki may become a part of Manga+Press 2.7.

Something else I’m going to have consider are upgrade  paths. How do I maintain backwards compatibility for users who are upgrading from older versions of Manga+Press?

Go ahead and grab the update!

Otherwise, that’s it! Enjoy

1. Support Multiple Comics Series.
   I need to decide which term makes more sense. A series should refer to a group of comics related to each other by storyline, so if you have comics with two different storylines, that would be two different series. If I do this, that would mean I would have to rethink how Manga+Press handles its categories.
2. International language support.
   This is a must and one I’ve considered since v1.0 but I haven’t received any requests for multiple languages and honestly, which ones do I support? Where do I get translators? Would there be any volunteers?
3. Custom Post Type: “Comic.”
   If I do this, that practically means that 2.7 will not be supported by WordPress 2.9. The next version of WordPress is supposed to feature custom post types and if that happens, that might eliminate the need for a database table to keep track of the comics, or at the very least, it would eliminate the need for a custom meta field.
4. WordPress μ support.
   With the merger of WPMU and WordPress in version 3.0, this is something that I’m going to have to look at. Last fall, I ran a test with Manga+Press 2.5 and WPMU and for the most part, it worked just fine except for one problem: the comic banner cache. The only thing I can think of is integrating TimThumb further into Manga+Press

Other possibilities:

• Eliminating the Post New Comic page.
  With being able to add your comics through the Add New Post page, the Post New Comic page is probably unnecessary. On the other hand, if I add multiple series support.
• Developing CharacterWiki.
  CharacterWiki would have to work with Manga+Press: different series=different characters. Once again, this would be a WordPress 3.0-only feature because I can see how custom Post Types can be used for this feature.

So these are my current ideas for the next version of Manga+Press. Feel free to comment if you have any other ideas for features that can be included in the next version.