Sometimes I see people get asked what would you change about WordPress CMS?
I have not been asked this yet, but if I were asked, first, I’d change how notifications are displayed to admins.
This is a problem that has existed for years, and nowadays, notifications have lost their real purpose.
Notifications in the core are useful when there is a major update of a plugin, and you need to update the database structure.
Or you purchased a theme and need to finish the setup.
In recent years, more plugins have abused the WordPress admin notifications to make a sale.
There are examples that come to mind, but I don’t want to point to anyone specifically.
You see long-form notifications asking for a review or to purchase a paid version of the plugin.
And they keep nagging you through the WordPress Dashboard, some even making it difficult to permanently dismiss the notification.
So, the change would consists in 1) Penalize plugins/themes that blatantly abuse the admin notifications and 2) Set a new place for notifications to show. Instead to be displayed at the top of the main content body in the WordPress admin area, add a drop-down to the WordPress Admin Bar and display the notifications in an auto-hiding div element. If the drop-down is not hovered, then no notifications are displayed.
The plugins page needs a change too. I’ll talk about that in another post.