A major new feature in WordPress was first requested over six years ago in this core ticket has now launched as part of WordPress 4.4. This feature has a dramatic and interesting history. Its arrival has been presaged in changes over at least the last three core releases. Its development has followed an interesting and at-times controversial path involving many well-known core contributors. Its presence has major implications for anyone who develops or maintains themes and plugins in WordPress. The feature in question is Taxonomy Term Meta, and it’s a big big deal!
This session has several purposes:
to provide a brief and entertaining account of the development process and major design decisions involved in making term meta happen, including accounts from the people who developed the feature.
to provide a quick technical introduction to the feature itself and its API.
to discuss what the feature means for WordPress developers and users — in particular for anyone who maintains themes and plugins.
This un-boring session is most appropriate for developers, but also potentially interesting to anyone with responsibility for a WordPress theme or plugin. I’ll be drawing on my experience as a maintainer of several large plugins (including Co-Authors plus) my relationships with several of the core contributors most important to this change and my work at Automattic on WordPress.com VIP, where we’ve spent a significant amount of effort preparing our clients for this transition.

Presentation Slides »