wordpress 1.5 gamma review for non-professional coders

OK, so where mark is a coder who dabbles in design, I’m an artist (and sometimes designer) who dabbles in code. We actually agree on most things in our review, but might be finding them in different ways.

First off, the interface: I love the new dashboard. It’s nice to have stats and news right up front in the admin. The new architecture took a minor amount of getting used to, but I think the whole thing is pretty hot. Admittedly, I’m a little disappointed that my quicktags have managed to disappear on safari – if wordpress wants stubborn mac-heads like me to use their ware, they’ve got to fix that bug! On the other hand, when I switched to Firefox to see what was up, I was really impressed with the new sidebar. Still, old habits die hard, and altho I know most coders would kill me for saying it, I want the option of staying with safari (am writing in it right now, sans-quicktags).

Given that I’ve got a whole site built around my blog, I also wouldn’t mind a bit more documentation on “write page” functionality – what it will do and how it works – before I dive in and start changing my site’s architecture. Maybe a link to some samples directly from the page? Maybe I am just a wuss. I do think the option is nice, and mark says it’s pretty easy, so I’ll take his word for it ;)

plug-ins and hacks: this is infinitely easier. Granted, I downloaded dr dave’s plug in manager (not a wordpress product, but an external plug that takes advantage of some if its new features), and the only plugins that seemed to install without hassle were his (spam karma is great – I was using a captcha until now, but this product also stops trackbacks!), whereas others would not work when installed, and I could not uninstall through the interface, despite that I know I’ve got everything set up right. Still, just using ftp and the dashboard, I managed to get spell checks, back ups and various other plugs installed without having to change ANY of my template files – just upload, and hit the on button. Pretty hot.

themes: as promised, the best new thing about wordpress. I was shocked at how easy it was to turn my old template into a usable theme, and will be distributing it on my blog’s 2nd birthday (the 20th of feb, 2005 – to be called “NAN”), complete with instructions on how to replace my menu with your own (flash, image, whatever). Do you think I should offer it in a plain white as well as the yellow I currently have? Anyhow, themes are super easy to change (just a click), and, if you are not a coder, also easy to install. Just upload (be sure to use ASCII ftp – it gets all funky if you transfer as raw data) and click to change. I’m not really a professional coder, and had to spend 2-3 days making my original template do what I wanted when I first switched from blogger to WordPress. This took all of 5 minutes to adapt to the new 1.5.

Obviously, there are still a lot of bugs that need to be worked out, but these seem to mostly be behind the interface, which is OK by me. I’m really happy with it, and how easy it is to use (even without the quicktags – it’s like a refresher on basic html every day!). They seem to have gotten some cleaner code from last time around, and fixed a few things I had noted at other times (like some odd characters in the atom feed).

Now I just have to beg some of the stragglers whose plug-ins I was using to update their code and make it work with the new wordpress… (I miss my wp-email’s “email this post” feature.)

So, there it is. I took the plunge and installed the gamma before it was an official release. Big step for me. And I’m glad I did. Perhaps with themes, wordpress will become the new iMac – what color is your blog?
(I’ve got one kubrick, one NAN, and am working on a Classic – OLD’S COOL!)