The Phenomenon of Web Integration and APIs
A maybe not so new but definitely hot area when it comes to Wordpress plug-ins is integration. Everything should integrate with each other these days.
Users want to share the top albums of their music collection, previous additions to their bookmark collection, or why not show you and other visitors random photographies from their sister’s wedding which they store using Flickr?
Whether the majority of integration plug-ins existing today are necessary (and useful) or not is a matter of taste. Something taste won’t change however, is the fact that many things benefit from users growing interest and search for better and innovative levels of integration.
One clear benefit is the fact that users who want to integrate things with each other puts pressure on popular on-line services to roll out APIs and good documentation on how to write code against them. Also, many existing services tend to polish up their APIs and make sure their new services quickly gets added into existing ones.
Since the vast majority of plug-ins are released under an open source license, the code for the plug-ins themselves make up valuable documentation and study material for the rest of the community. Something that definitely can lead to future innovations.
Many developers probably wonder whether there are (useful) services not yet integrated nicely into Wordpress. Judging from a look at various plug-in collections one might get the impression everything worth doing might already have been done - twice.
The thing with APIs is: never be afraid of getting to the point of re-inventing the wheel, because it is impossible to do so anyway, someone already handed you the wheel. Part of the idea with APIs is the fact that you have been given the instructions on how your code should interact with an object, what data to give it and what data to expect back in return, and in what format.
It is hard to believe that there is a widely used service in existence which no one has yet written a plug-in to integrate with Wordpress. Even though it has a proper API and a potentially large user base within the Wordpress community.
The service I’m talking about is called Cafepress and they describe themselves as:
…an on-line marketplace that offers sellers complete e-commerce services to independently create and sell a wide variety of products, and offers buyers unique merchandise across virtually every topic. Launched in 1999, CafePress.com has empowered individuals, organizations and businesses to create, buy and sell customized merchandise online using the company’s unique print-on-demand and e-commerce services. Today, CafePress.com is a growing network of over 2.5 million members who have unleashed their creativity to transform their artwork and ideas into unique gifts and new revenue streams.
Maybe it is time to do something about this?