How to Make New Feature Suggestions for WordPress

Sometimes, you might want to suggest new features for WordPress to improve its functionality, tailor the platform to your needs, or address specific issues you encounter.

If this is your first time suggesting new features for WordPress, you might feel unsure about how to do it. The good news is that it’s actually quite simple.

You can suggest new features using Trac or GitHub. You can even report bugs and open tickets so developers can improve the WordPress core. This process helps keep WordPress up-to-date and functional.

In this article, let us show you how to make new feature suggestions for WordPress.

How New Features Make Their Way into WordPress

As open-source software, WordPress’s development is driven by its users and volunteer developers, who make up the core team. Anyone can suggest new features and improvements they think would benefit all WordPress websites.

If enough users want a feature, and developers are interested in working on it, it eventually becomes part of the software.

This has been the winning formula that has led to WordPress now powering over 43% of all websites.

WordPress can also be easily extended with plugins. This means that even if a feature is not included in the core software, it could still be added as a WordPress plugin.

If a feature can be easily added using a plugin and is not beneficial for most WordPress users, then it might not be added to the core. This is usually the case with most new feature suggestions.

Users can suggest features using WordPress Trac, a bug tracking, development, and ticketing software. All WordPress development progress is recorded on Trac.

Another place where users can suggest new features is the WordPress Requests and Feedback Forum. This forum allows users to submit their suggestions as ideas, and other WordPress users can vote on them.

Depending on the number of votes an idea generates, the WordPress development team can consider it to be added to the core.

With that in mind, it’s helpful to learn how to use WordPress Trac and GitHub to submit new feature ideas. Here’s a quick overview of all the methods we’ll share in this guide; simply click the links below to jump ahead:

Ready? Let’s get started.

Method 1: Adding a New WordPress Feature Suggestion Using Trac

First, make sure that you are using Trac correctly.

Before creating a Trac ticket, please thoroughly search through it to ensure someone else hasn’t already suggested this feature.

You can do that by going to the WordPress Core search page and entering the search term in the search bar.

Once you are sure that the feature you are going to suggest does not exist, then you can visit the Trac website.

From here, simply click the ‘Create a new ticket’ button.

Next, you will need to log in to your WordPress.org account.

If you don’t have an account, you must sign up first.

Once you are logged in, you will see the ‘New Ticket’ form.

Go ahead and enter the details for your feature suggestion.

First, you need to provide a summary of your feature suggestion. This should be a simple one-liner that explains the problem that you are trying to solve with your feature suggestion.

In the ‘Description’ area, you will need to provide as much detail as you want about the feature you are suggesting.

Feel free to add screenshots and mockups to explain your suggestion. You also need to use this space to make a case for your feature suggestion, explaining why you think it should be part of the core.

Make sure that you select ‘Feature request’ as your ticket type. If you add a bug report, then you’ll want to select ‘defect (bug).’

And if you think that the feature you suggest is actually an existing feature enhancement, select ‘enhancement’ as your ticket type instead.

Then, you can choose a WordPress version number (like 6.1), component, and contributor focus according to your requirements.

The component refers to a specific area, such as WordPress comments, editor, themes, plugins, and more. By contrast, contributor factors are additional tags you can add to your ticket.

When you are done, you can preview the details and click the ‘Create ticket’ button.

If you scroll down from there, you will see a preview of your ticket.

Ensure that all the details are correct before submitting the WordPress feature suggestion ticket.

What Happens After You Submit a Ticket to Trac?

Once you have submitted a ticket to Trac, it will be available to other contributors and developers.

Lead developers will also receive notifications, and they can review your ticket and take action on it.

Then, any WordPress user can take a number of actions on the ticket. For example, someone can change the focus, component, status, and other details. These changes will be recorded and shown in Trac.

If your ticket gains enough interest, someone can develop and submit a patch for it. The lead developer can then review this patch, which can be accepted.

Once a patch is accepted, either a lead developer or another person with permission can ‘commit’ the change, and it will be added to the core during the next update cycle.

Depending on the nature of your suggestion, it can take days, weeks, months, and sometimes even years to become a part of the core.

Despite the sometimes long wait, submitting feature requests is worth the effort. Because of requests like these, WordPress has grown from software that only supported blogs to the CMS that it is today.

Method 2: Adding a New WordPress Feature Suggestion Using GitHub

Another way you can request new features in WordPress is by using GitHub.

GitHub is a cloud-based website that allows developers to store and manage their code, track changes, offer version control, and collaborate with others on a project.

First, you’ll need to visit the GitHub website and sign up for a free account.

After that, you can visit the WordPress core page on GitHub.

From the ‘Overview’ tab, let’s switch to ‘Repositories.’

On the next screen, you’ll want to search for the repository where you want to suggest new WordPress features.

For example, if you have a new idea, bug report, or improvement recommendation for the block editor, then you can post it in the ‘Gutenberg’ repository.

After selecting the relevant repository, you can create a ticket for your suggestion.

Simply click the ‘Issue’ option from the menu at the top.

Next, you’ll see a list of issues, bug reports, and other threads.

From here, you can search the issue tab and ensure your feature request hasn’t already been posted. Then, you can click the ‘New issue’ button in the top corner.

You should then see multiple options to create a new issue.

Go ahead and select the ‘Feature request’ option.

The next step is to type in a title and your request in detail.

After that, simply click the ‘Submit new issue’ button to create the ticket.

With that done, there will be a GitHub thread where you can follow the discussion and development of your suggested feature.

We hope this article helped you learn how to make new feature suggestions for WordPress. You may also want to check out our guide on why WordPress is free and how to make a living with WordPress.

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