Automattic
Feature Request: Add-ons / Extensions
What
I love Studio, but I think it is missing a gem: App extensions (or add-ons).
That would require exposing some parts of the UI, like the menu or section under the Overview tab (actually each tab), and allowing extensions to hook into it.
Why
Extensibility of a tool like Studio is key for people with intense use, and I think that a feature like this will spread its adoption.
I think the more we can develop extensions over Studio, the more it will be embraced by the community.
I would like to create an add-on to simply create site notes, or an extension that has access to wp-cli and can create DB back-ups with wp db import/export.
Why not think bigger and allow us to create our own extension for push / pull to our own server? I understand there is already an area that lets you do that with wp dot com, and maybe there is a commercial gain there, but if someone is able to develop an extension, I'm pretty sure it already has a favourite hosting.
How
No response
I love the idea of extensibility, personally, and think it would serve the mission of Studio well.
Our mission is for Studio to be the fastest and simplest way for developers to build a WordPress site. We welcome all contributions in pursuit of this mission. Think fewer buttons, not more.
By opening up an API for third-parties to add support for their own hosts, it would lead to much more widespread adoption and support of the WordPress ecosystem. While it's possible to do some sort of connection to a self-hosted site via direct authentication, I suspect an addon that could integrate directly to cPanel (for example) would be hugely useful across countless hosts to enable local development environments and support the WordPress community.
The only question is if allowing that functionality is something Automattic would be open to allowing others to build out add-ons for Studio to accomplish, or if Studio is meant to be exclusively a gateway to Automattic-affiliated hosts. (Honestly, if we could get an answer to that, it'd be tremendously useful to determine next steps if this could be exposed for third-party contributions to offer a solution for, or if it's a non-starter and efforts are better spent elsewhere)
Another example of an add-on that could expand functionality of Studio (depending on the APIs exposed) could be to lock down external HTTP requests or mail messages from the local site. If it came with a small list of allowed external domains to query ( wordpress.com / jetpack.com / wordpress.org ) and the ability to add extra ones if necessary and log rejected requests (to simplify clicking to allow) it could avoid a lot of common issues with staging sites where someone clones it only to find it's reached out to a third-party service and real production users are being contacted by a staging site. (something that other solutions like https://github.com/a8cteam51/safety-net were built to try and mitigate)
More extensibility options in Studio has definitely been a popular request, and one that might be explored more in the future. Right now, the focus is on core functionality (think performance) and improved support for other common tools like WooCommerce and WordPress Playground blueprints. We actually just added a Roadmap page on the docs to provide more clarity on what the team is working on.
In my personal opinion, there is still a fair amount of foundational work to do before focusing on extensibility, given how much the app will likely evolve in the next ~6 months. Exciting times ahead!
