Wordpress 2.0… Who cares?

The software I use for this blog is called WordPress… for those of you who are familiar with WordPress, you probably know that version 2.0 came out not too long ago. I haven’t upgraded to 2.0 yet, and the other day Owen wanted to know why.

I haven’t upgraded for a number of reasons… most of which could be answered by Owen’s own post back in November, titled What’s New In WordPress 2.0.

First thing I hate about upgrading any installation of WordPress is having to go into my blog folder and deleting all the WordPress files and then uploading the new distribution files. So, instead of experimenting on the blog, I uploaded WordPress 2.0 into a new folder and started it as a new installation to check it out.

Let’s run through Owen’s list of new features in 2.0 and my experiences with it in my test blog.

Many of the changes in WordPress from 1.5 to 2.0 are under the hood. They are things that you’re not going to notice unless you are developer. There are some features that casual users will notice that are significant, but (in my opinion) most of the real change has happened where most people won’t see.

Okay… but I’m not a developer. So, tell me why I should care? My current installation of WordPress 1.5.2 works just fine. What could you possibly have changed that will make my blog run any smoother? I don’t consider this a compelling reason to upgrade.

More Abstracted Data Layer - The core WordPress code has been refactored to abstract direct calls to the database when adding posts, comments, and other data. This will lead to improvements in database access (perhaps even supporting other database engines in the future) and plugin development, including…

Uhh…. what?

Admin Redesign - It’s not so significant as the Tiger Admin plugin, but there are a few more gadgets in the admin, especially on the Write page. You can now drag sections of the page to reorganize them, and click the plus/minus to expand/contract the sections.

Yeah, I wasn’t impressed. I liked the old Admin better. If I wanted to minimize certain things, I’d switch to Basic mode. The admin pages take longer to load now too, which sucks.

The Rich Editor - WordPress has a new post editor built in that lets you see what you’re going to get without having to decipher tags. You can also resize the editing area on the fly by dragging it, which is pretty cool. Not everyone who has tried it likes the WYSIWYG editor, so there is an option to disable it on a per-user basis.

Like everyone else, I hate the WYSIWYG editor. I realize I can turn it off, but why should I even bother to upgrade when this is touted as one of the major new features? I like having full control of the HTML in my editor anyway. The WYSIWYG editor is buggy as well, making the entire upgrade useless.

Image/File Uploading - Just under the Rich Editor in the Write panel, there is a new control that allows you to upload and insert images into your posts. WordPress keeps track of these images and can even automatically provide dedicated pages to receive comments for them.

This is horrible. It creates new pages for my images, and stores them in folders that have datestamped. I like storing all my images in one directory, making it easier to find them. This might be cool if I was running a website like hotornot.com. But there is no way to disable or change the directory structure for the images.

Improved Post Preview - Instead of displaying the post as plain text below the editor, the post is now displayed in an embedded frame, using all of the layout and CSS that is normally applied to your site. In effect, the post looks exactly like it will when you publish it, giving you ample opportunity to review the post’s layout.

Whee! Big deal. I can see how it will appear on my site simply by pressing “Save and Continue Editing” now. While it may not put it in my template, at least I know how the text will appear. I can visualize the rest.

User Metadata - To support user-based options, the user data now sports a much more flexible structure. People who use WordPress as a CMS can now use code to add custom data of any kind to any user profile.

In the words of Beavis and Butthead… “Uhh…. huh huh…. uhh…. yeah”.

User Roles and Capabilities - The “user level” concept of security has now been replaced with Roles. WordPress associates a Role to each user. Roles have Capabilities such as “edit posts” and “activate plugins” that allow certain actions. There is no more concept of hierarchical users, but plugin authors can now create whole new Capabilities to apply proper permission management.

And since I’m the only author in my blog, there’s only one user…. big deal. Many blogs out there are of the same mindset. One blog - one author. This is catering to the minority and not to your mass market. Again, a feature touted as a main reason to upgrade… again, a feature I say “big deal” to.

Presentation Page Changes - WordPress 1.5 lets you switch themes, and 2.0 shows you what they look like before you do it. If a theme includes a screenshot, you’ll see it in the Presentation admin panel to help you choose the theme for your site.

Might be a big deal if I had a bunch of themes and can’t remember how they looked, this might be important. As it is, it’s clunky and takes up too much room on the Admin panel.

Ajax Category Addition - There’s a bunch of ajax in WordPress 2.0 and this is probably the most requested use of it. This feature lets you add new categories directly from the post-writing page.

This is cool, but not a compelling reason to upgrade. I don’t add new categories that often.

Ajax List Management - There are a few places in the admin that show lists of things and let you delete, like categories, posts, comments. Now, instead of reloading, the row turns red and then fades out.

Oooh kids… watch the pretty blinking red light! Ho-hum.

Moved Javascript/Images - Version 2.0 uses a lot more javascript than prior versions. Some utilities, like FAT (Fade Anything Technique) and SACK (Simple Ajax Code Kit), can be used by other tools and plugins, so it’s good to put them someplace where developers know they will reside, and outside of the admin directory, which might have weird permissions.

Theme Admin Pages - The guys who worked on K2 went to some lengths to hack a custom configuration page for their theme into the WordPress admin. Now that capability is easily available by including a functions.php file with the theme. You can see this at work in the new header generator for the Default theme.

Database Versioning - Now when updates are made to the database schema, your admin panel will tell you to run the upgrade routines. This is handy because it keeps your database fresh enough to support the code that runs on it.

So, you’re telling me I should go through the pains of upgrading to making plugin developers lives easier? Uhhh… no.

Ping Delay Removed - Rather than pinging trackbacks and pingbacks when the post is saved (this causes the delay you see when posting to WP1.5), the pings are attempted via a different method that allows the admin interface to respond more quickly.

Persistent Cache - There are certain types of queries that WordPress makes to the database repeatedly. To speed things up, the results of these queries are cached to disk. This caching is still compatible with other caching plugins, like WP-Cache, and could be just enough of a boost for larger sites to avoid optimizing everything.

If anything WordPress 2.0 takes longer to load than 1.5.2. So, these aren’t really true.

New Built-In Plugins - WordPress 2.0 is now packed with the Akismet plugin for comment spam prevention, and the WP-DB-Backup plugin for manual or automated database backups.

I already have the Akismet plugin and I have a cron job setup for database backups. Ho-hum.

I’m also concerned that a number of the vast amount of plugins (at last count 26) I do use won’t work with WordPress 2.0.

So, WordPress developers… where is the compelling reason for me to upgrade? I’ve always gone by the mantra If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it… and my current 1.5.2 installation is running just fine. Everything else that I’m reading shows that this was a rushed release that’s already riddled with bugs.