WordPress Week!

Posted by Colin Clark on Feb 23rd, 2009 | View Comments

I’ve decided to dedicate this next week’s posts to my favorite website platform, wordpress. A few months ago wordpress 2.7 was released and I think that with the updates it has truly crossed the chasm into the mainstream.

I began using wordpress during the 2.6 release era and I was fairly impressed with the power and ease of use of the platform. I initially regarded the release of 2.7 as a primarily cosmetic advance. The user interface was indeed greatly enhanced, but it took me a few months of using the new wordpress to realize the tremendous improvements bundled in the new package.

The biggest improvement in wp 2.7 is that you can now install plugins from within wordpress. In 2.6 you had to upload them directly to your hosting server. So, for example, if I wanted to install a calendar plugin I would have to download the plugin, log into my hosting server, upload the file to the wp-content/plugins folder, unzip the file, then log into wordpress and activate and set up the plugin. With wp 2.7 you simply click on the plugins function and you can search for the plugin you want and install it right there. It’s so much easier!

Another problem with 2.6 was that it was difficult to update to a new version of wordpress when it was released. One solution I found was to install the ‘automatic upgrade’ plugin, but it didn’t always work and it took several steps and a significant amount of time to upgrade. The other option was to backup your theme and database and install the new version on the backend, which I never even tried because it seemed like such a pain. With wp 2.7, automatic upgrade is built in and it takes maybe 10 seconds to get the upgrades you need.

The improvements in wp 2.7 make wordpress so easy to use that I can see it gaining even more popularity in the future. My only request would be that they make it just as easy to install new themes as it is to install plugins. That would really make the whole package complete.