2016-01-29, 04:52 PM
Sometimes you want a page without comments or without any extra decorations. Forum rules are a good example, as are terms of service pages, privacy policy pages, contact us pages, and more. This is evidenced by the large number of downloads existing page management plugins for 1.x have received.
Pages would never have commenting in the core (though plugins may add such a thing - I don't see why or how that would be at all useful) and would be intended to display basic content that could be hooked into by plugins. Right now if plugins want to add new pages, they hook into misc.php or add a new PHP file. With a core pages system, they'd simply add a new page controller or action and gain the benefits of "pretty" URLs and easy ACP management.
We've already discussed multiple times that we really want to remove the portal system from the core. With pages, the portal could simply become another page making use of a controller action to provide the same functionality (or more) as the current 1.x portal.php page provides. The advantage of it being a page is that it could be easily removed by those who don't want it and expanded by those who do want it.
I would hardly say it's a waste of resources given the above potential uses, the fact it overwhelmingly so far has been voted in favour (72% at the time of writing) and the fact that it's a very simple thing to implement.
Regarding announcements, we've already said that announcements will be staying but will just be threads with a special field attached (e.g.: "is_announcement": true) in order to stop duplicating efforts.
Pages would never have commenting in the core (though plugins may add such a thing - I don't see why or how that would be at all useful) and would be intended to display basic content that could be hooked into by plugins. Right now if plugins want to add new pages, they hook into misc.php or add a new PHP file. With a core pages system, they'd simply add a new page controller or action and gain the benefits of "pretty" URLs and easy ACP management.
We've already discussed multiple times that we really want to remove the portal system from the core. With pages, the portal could simply become another page making use of a controller action to provide the same functionality (or more) as the current 1.x portal.php page provides. The advantage of it being a page is that it could be easily removed by those who don't want it and expanded by those who do want it.
I would hardly say it's a waste of resources given the above potential uses, the fact it overwhelmingly so far has been voted in favour (72% at the time of writing) and the fact that it's a very simple thing to implement.
Regarding announcements, we've already said that announcements will be staying but will just be threads with a special field attached (e.g.: "is_announcement": true) in order to stop duplicating efforts.