[wp-hackers] [GSoC 2011] My idea for "Moving Wordpress"

[Deepak Mittal]

Unlike other applicants applying for "Moving Wordpress" idea, my
approach is fairly different in the implementation. My idea is to make
the plugin work on different platforms and server environments.

The idea of moving is a 2 step process - moving files and moving
database (and editing it on the fly). Moving files is fairly trivial
using FTP. Moving database gets tricky as it depends on the server
environment. Some shared hosts wouldn't allow remote connections, some
wouldn't allow executing shell_exec which could be used for importing
database using shell commands.

My idea is to use a group of methods for database movement which would
allow the plugin to work across most of the server configuration and
host. The methods will be tried in decreasing order of performance.
So, my plugin will first try to move database with a method that
provides best performance, if it fails, it tries second best method
until it finds a method which works. If all methods get exhausted, an
appropriate error is thrown.

The basic approach is to make the plugin work for most users rather
than providing them humongous list of features which don't work on
half the servers.

I'd like some feedback on this.
-- 
Regards,
Deepak Mittal,
Twitter - @dpacmittal