I am no longer using Media Temple as my web host, so comments have been closed.

Though it’s typically applied to software, I tend to apply the YAGNI mentality to other things, as well. That is to say that I’d rather wait and upgrade when I need something rather than pay for something that I may never need.

Case in point: A couple of weeks ago, I outgrew my current host and needed to upgrade so I ended up going with Media Temple DV hosting.

In most shared hosting environments, you use whatever configuration they give you; however, because of the nature of the DV environment, the server is completely yours. That means that you’re responsible for tweaking Apache, PHP, and MySQL to make sure that it’s working best for your needs.

So what would a migration to a VPS environment be without a little bit of tweaking?

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If you’re responsible for heading up a project be it for your team, your company, or even yourself, then odds are you can’t help but think in terms of milestones or features.

Honestly, if you’re working on something for yourself, this may not be as big of an issue, but if you’re working in the context of any larger environment in which you’re responsible for delivering a solution to a client, then there are a variety of ways that you may divide up the project in order to get provide some rhythm of delivery.

Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to work on larger projects in which I’ve had the ability to spend time thinking and experimenting with WordPress project management as it relates to delivering features (or milestones, to most of us), and I thought it’d be worth sharing here if for no other reason than to get others’ opinions on the two approaches.

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Last week, I talked a little bit about design patterns – namely MVC and event-driven patterns – and WordPress, and how there’s the occasional effort to make the core application work in a way in which it isn’t designed.

Obviously, I still think that, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t borrow concepts from certain design patterns in order to help improve our conceptual model of how WordPress solutions are built.

Case in point: I think it’s acceptable to think of page templates and post type templates as views.

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One of the things that we often see in the “offline marketplace” – for lack of a better term – is the idea of planned obsolescence.

Simply defined:

a policy of producing consumer goods that rapidly become obsolete and so require replacing, achieved by frequent changes in design, termination of the supply of spare parts, and the use of nondurable materials.

This is something that we see in auto industry, in the electronics industry, and in the computer industry. Think of it this way: Remember the iPhone 3? Or remember the Chevrolet Monte Carlo?

These are but two examples of products that were widely used – some for decades – and then were replaced by another product either by one with a brand new version or by an entire new line.

This is one of those things we don’t necessarily consider or talk about in the context of software. But why? All other platforms and languages aside, would planned obsolescence in WordPress be so bad?

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