Posts Tagged ‘review’

Testing WordPress 2.7 RC1

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

Today WordPress 2.7 RC1 was released, which you can get here. I decided after all of the hype, I have some free time, I should probably take a look at it. After installing and poking around the back end a bit, all I have to say is wow! Perhaps you have heard that this is a major revision that probable deserved the designation of 3.0, I am going to agree, this is a major over-hall! I thought I would take a moment to share my first impressions.

When you first log in to the admin section, you are presented with a completely new look! In 2.6, you had a rather sparse dashboard that had a bunch of information, with most of it being unnecessary. Two of the most important sections on the dashboard were the “Right Now” and “Recent Comments” panels. In 2.6 these were basically just populated with text and links. In 2.7, they still remain, however now they contain a beautiful list look that is so much easier to see what is going on at a glance. The comments section now allows you to manage individual comments right from the dashboard which should save quite a bit of unnecessary navigation!

Also new to the dashboard is a panel that gives you the power to write a new post right from within dashboard. This is a great new feature that a lot of people are going to take advantage of. There are a couple of issues that will keep me from using it on a regular basis however. The quick post panel lacks the ability to assign categories to a post and also only provides a visual editor. Since I regularly use the code view, as well as the need to assign categories, I will probably only use this as a quick way to put a draft together. Luckily, right below the quick post panel is a panel of recent drafts, so after creating a draft in the quick post panel, you can simply click it’s name below and have all of the normal features ready to go.

On top of presenting a more informative and useful dashboard, You now have the ability to drag and drop any of the panels, as well as hide them, giving you a much more personal dashboard. This modular way of doing things is used throughout the entire admin section letting you customize any sub section you feel could use a change. For instance when creating a new post, maybe you forget to assign tags to your post on a regular basis, no problem, move the “Tags” panel above the “Publish” forcing you to look at it before you click the publish button.

One of the other most obvious changes from 2.6 to 2.7 was to take the top navigational links and move them to the sidebar. I absolutely love this change. Not so much for the position, but for the fact that each of the main links now also shows the sub-navigation. I really like not having to wait for a new page to load before I can get what I need. You also have the ability of hiding the sub navigation for each individual section, as well as condensing the entire panel down to only the icons, which makes the interface very clean.

Aside from the interface, there are a number of new features added to this version, including: threaded comments, sticky posts, automatic upgrading, one click plugin installs, comment paging, batch and inline editing.

This new version of WordPress really is big step forward! The interface is now much more user friendly, and there are a ton of new features which greatly improve upon an already great product. I can not wait till it is released in the wild, and hope to have a fresh site design coming shortly after.

Tags: , ,
Posted in web development | No Comments »

What is Cuil.com?

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

I have been seeing a lot of references to cuil.com popping up in my RSS feeds and tweets lately. Wondering what it was all about (and how it is supposed to be pronounced), but too lazy to actually click on any of the links, I put the url in my trusty Firefox browser and was sent to a new search engine.

Cuil.com is a new search engine that claims to search “three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft”. They don’t mention Yahoo, but, then again with all of the trouble they are having lately, I guess I am not surprised. My first thought on seeing this is, do we really need another search engine? First off, I don’t actually go to the search engine pages, I generally just type my query into the search bar at the top of my browser. It appears that you can add this functionality, but would it be worth it…

I decided to give this browser a try. I didn’t really have anything at the top of my search list, so I decided to type my name in, Shawn Cope. Hmmmm, well the top search for my name was an article on the musician, Citizen Cope, and while I like his music, this obviously wasn’t what I was looking for. Thinking I should refine my search, I added quotes around my name. This search yielded somewhat better results in that it actually found pages that referenced my name. There were lots of pages that referenced me, or pages which I had left comments on. What it did not find however were any references to my site, www.shawncope.com. This is kind of worthless to me. If I do this same search in Google or Yahoo, that is the top search result, and what I have to assume someone might be searching for. I could not find this link in the top 3 pages.

I did a few other searches, and they all came up with somewhat interesting results, nut not the most relevant results. For me, this will not become my search engine of choice anytime soon. Perhaps in the future, they will get better, and I will change my mind. I doubt however I am going to change my mind about their name. Is it supposed to be pronounced, cool, coil or something else?

Tags: ,
Posted in technology | No Comments »

WordPress for the iphone

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

The WordPress app for the iPhone was recently released and I wasted no time installing it! Since I also need a reason to try it out, I am going to give a quick review of it.

This is an app that I am really looking forward to using! Let’s face it, who can’t use yet another opportunity to stay plugged in and productive! I am actually writing this post while on my way to a ball game. Just one less excuse for me not writing more often.

My first impression is that it is rather clean looking and easy to use. Everything you need to create a post is right here and easily accessible.

There are only a handful of features to use. You can create a new post. You can edit any existing post on your blog. You can assign categories and tags to these posts. And you also have the ability to upload photos from the iPhone which will be a very handy feature to have while out and about.

That is about the extent of things however. Keep in mind that this is just the 1.0 release so it is only going to get nicer, however for the app to be really useful, I would include some additional features.

One glaring omission is the lack of a code editing mode within the posts. This most likely won’t be an issue for the typical blogger, however, if like me, you also use WordPress for content management, it is a very useful feature to have.

Another feature I would like to see added is some way to manage the back end of the blog. Personally, I can’t see wanting to do much here on my phone, but it would be nice to be able to moderate comments, or work with pages.

While this app doesn’t have every feature you might want now, it is a great start, and I have a feeling, quite a few bloggers are going to find it indispensable. Oh, and by the way, it is completely free!

EDIT – for some reason when I posted this, it reverted back to a the draft I was editing. Not sure if this is a bug, or if I did something wrong, but I would strongly suggest you check the published post to be sure it is correct.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in technology | No Comments »