The guys and gals at Automattic have published their Google Summer Of Code 2008 Codex Article which highlights various mentors and ideas. For those of you who don’t know what the Google Summer Of Code Project is all about, here is a brief intro.
Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source projects. Google will be working with a several open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund several projects over a three month period. Historically, the program has brought together over 1,500 students with over 130 open source projects to create millions of lines of code. The program, which kicked off in 2005, is now in its fourth year. If are feeling nostalgic or are interested in learning more about the projects we have worked with in the past, check out the 2006 and 2007 program pages.
There are some big names on the mentor list such as Matt Mullenweg, Lloyd Budd, Joseph Scott and newly acquired Andy Peatling with Matt taking on the double duty of being the Mentor’s Mentor. Mentors act as administrators over a particular idea or project that is undertaken by a student.
Some of the ideas that have been proposed for this years GSOC include:
- Performance
- XML-RPC
- Web Forums Export/Import Standard and Tools
- WordPress Import/Export Tuning
- Trac Social Bug Tracking development
- Integrated Caching Solutions
- XHTML validation framework, which helps ensure that all output of WP (including templates) produces valid HTML
- Extending the search system to support more advanced search syntax, relevance, and external APIs like Google or Yahoo’s.
- Batch editing of post and attachment attributes such as categories, tags, author.
As you can see, there is good range of projects for the aspiring coder to participate in. If you are looking to hone your skills and are looking for a challenge, this is a good way for you to test your knowledge.
If you would like to see what was worked on in the previous GSoC, check out the WordPress SOC 2007 Google Group or the article within the Codex.
Thanks Jeffro2pt0. I submitted our application last Friday. We should find out on Monday if our application is accepted.
I’m really hoping we are. I think our application is much stronger this year. Last year the results were great, but I think we are on a path to even even better ones this year!
If someone is interesting in being a WordPress mentor please do contact me. Summer starts early again this year 😉
The project I’m most interested in has got to be “Performance” (as generic of an “idea” that may be).
Totally anxious to see what the contributors-to-be and the mentor (Mahmoud Al-Qudsi according to the GSoC ’08 page) can cook up!
People are always complaining that WP’s performance is pit-bottom; but that’s just because they haven’t seen just how bad other scripts like phpBB, Gallery2, etc. are… then again, it’d totally rock if this summer WP can over-take Drupal, Movable Type, and the rest when it comes to high performance!
Emily, your perspective about WordPress and performance, I don’t think is shared by most. What do you base it on?
Which part of it, Lloyd? About it being bad performing or about it being better than phpBB and Gallery2?
That WordPress has bad performance.
Well I recently became the admin of a server farm for a private company with a number of various web scripts in large quantities, and I found WordPress to be one of the bottlenecks.
It’s plenty fast for normal operation; but if you’ve got lots of blogs or a blog with many visitors, it’s a bit of a problem.
These benchmarks are the closest (ratio-wise) to what I’m seeing:
http://www.iis-aid.com/article.....5_2_on_iis
I know that benchmark was on Windows, but on our server farm WordPress is about the same performance distance away from Drupal and about that much better than Gallery2 (which is incredibly scary).
Emily, that is a very interesting result. I’m sure if you are able to publish in details the environment and measurements, then the community will step up with recommendations.
“Performance tuning PHP 5.2 on IIS is an interesting article”, though the performance tuning there seems specifically focused only on PHP, and only on IIS. An important, but incomplete equation.
Lloyd, does this mean that in your *completely frank* opinion, WP outperforms Drupal, et. al. in benchmarks?
Emily sorry, what benchmarks are you referring to?
I meant that under generic stress/load-testing, do you believe that WP is faster (i.e. more req/sec) than Drupal & co.?
I admit, I’ve only recently foraged into the performance sector, but what my recent experience has shown is that WP is significantly slower than some of the other popular CMS/Blog scripts/engines out there on the market.
Hi Emily, I think that brings the conversation full circle. I’m sure if you are able to publish in details the environment and measurements, then the community will step up with recommendations.
Just received the email letting us know that WordPress has been accepted into GSoC 2008!
Very nice, I am looking forward to this years’ participation.
Lloyd Budd sorry, what benchmarks are you referring to?