So, WordPress 2.5 has just been released. Its new gallery system is really good, I would like to use it. Unfortunately, the WordPress team only added such a feature in to the basic system long - far too long - after picasa and flickr made web galleries a norm. So WordPress users like me had to turn to advanced plugins like myGallery and features like Lightbox to add those much needed “flash”. And now, there is no clear upgrade path for users (who had no choice earlier but to use those plugins) to convert to the WordPress gallery.
Some of the gallery schemes used in WP25 conflict with myGallery, and they cannot co-exist until myGallery is updated. Thankfully, Alex Rabe’s NextGen Gallery has been updated in time. But this is cold comfort for someone like me. When I chose myGallery, NGN was nowhere to be found. And now, with say hundreds of images in myGallery, what is the next step?
The WordPress development team should take into account the issues faced by users who had to deal with WP adding features into core that third party developers provided. The whole thing with Tagging is being repeated with media galleries. What’s next - caching?
Furthermore, at this point, I can’t even run the myGallery and WP25 gallery side-by-side. So I have to convert to NextGen Gallery (which thankfully has an import from myGallery function), then upgrade to WP25? This is a big job needing Big Hairy Balls. And all the time, there is this banner reminding not just me, but all my subscribers that I need to upgrade.
I am not objecting directly to the fact that the WordPress development team has adopted third-party features into core. I am merely saying that when they do something like that, the WP development team should consider the impact on people who did use the third-party function and made it so popular that it was folded into core. It is like screwing the very users who “voted” that the feature is a good one in the first place. If this sort of thing keeps going on, plugin developers will get pissed off and maybe I should bite the bullet and consider Expression Engine - at least I can scream dollars and sense into them.