[wp-hackers] Exporting Menus

[Mike Schinkel]

On Sep 1, 2010, at 12:01 AM, Beau Lebens wrote:
>>> I keep trying to build tools that help us move sites from Development to Staging to Production in a more automated way, without having to replace the entire DB, but I keep running into road blocks.    Right now the menus, widgets and SIte URL coded into the DB are my three major sticking points.
> 
>> Also, Beau Lebens though it wasn't an issue for many of the core developers given they are not really deploying client sites (except Mark.)
> 
> My point was not that it "wasn't an issue" so much as it's not
> something that comes up for a LOT of people (because of their
> "development cycle"), probably some of the core developers included.

Sorry if I misspoke; your clarification is exactly what I came away understanding. If my wording didn't mean the same to you I apologize; my intent was the same.

> I agree that the development server -> production server workflow with
> WordPress is far from ideal, and could use some work/review. I also
> don't doubt that if someone can come up with a non-intrusive,
> backwards-compatible, not-a-huge-massive-amount-of-code way of doing
> this, then it'd be supported in core (whether it was through actual
> inclusion, or just some new hooks or whatever to make it easier).

Hooks are definitely the starting point in most cases, but to make this elegant there's a need to load a bit of code before wp-config.php loads.  

If you remember what I asked for was the ability to load a small set of "bootstrap" code prior to WordPress loading wp-config.php so as not to have to ask to include my code (or something like it) in core.

> As WordPress sees more and more "enterprise"ish development, this'll
> become more of an issue, so it'd be good to get people together, come
> up with a "this is the best way to do this" and get that documented
> somewhere.

Completely agreed.

> Related: http://gsoc2010.wordpress.com/brian-mckenna-automatic-migration/

Yep. That addresses part of the of the problem.  But it was structured more to address casual migration than as a component of a development process workflow.  

A good first step to be sure.

-Mike