WordPress

When I first started developing this website, CMSReport.com, it was my intention to also take "the opportunity to provide a series of how-to articles on building a Website using Drupal".  I wanted to help those getting started in using a content management system for their site by suggesting some tips and ideas that could make their life easier.  As time wore on, when it came to my own site I found that except for a few well written posts I failed miserably at this goal.

I'm pretty good at tasks such as developing, innovating, documenting, and system administration.  However, some people can't walk and chew bubble gum at the same time.  Unfortunately, I'm one of those people.  I have difficulty developing and documenting at the same time.  This isn't unusual as one of the most talented programmers I know struggles with documentation and will ask me for help in writing instructions for his own software.  My point is that when you find people who is blessed with being able to document their own work you need to let others know about that person.

I could not help but chuckle when I read this post. Donncha O Caoimh hinted that he may have released WordPress MU 1.1.1 a day earlier then he intended. Sort of like sending that e-mail or blog post sooner then you had intended.  Despite the release of WordPress MU 1.1.1 a day early, it still sounds as if you can expect a good package out of this version.

Version 0.8 for the forum application, bbPress, has been released. This software is a "plain and simple forum" PHP application with roots out of WordPress.  New features in this version of bbPress include:

Matthew Mullenweg announced at Wordpress.org that WordPress 2.1 "Ella" is available for download. Some of the new features and changes listed in this version of WordPress that I think users will like include:

• Autosave makes sure you never lose a post again. I'm a habitual browser closer before saving my work...so this will be a big one for for me!
• A tabbed editor that allows you to switch between WYSIWYG and code editing instantly while writing a post.
• The lossless XML import and export makes it easy for you to move your content between WordPress blogs.
• You can set any “page” to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.
• Much more efficient database code, faster than previous versions. Domas Mituzas from MySQL went over all our queries with a fine-toothed comb.
• Pages can now be drafts, or private.
• Comment feeds now include all the comments, not just the last 10.
• A new version of the Akismet plugin is bundled.

Are you tired of all the Drupal and WordPress posts we've been doing lately here at CMS Report? Not my fault...I only report the CMS news! The fact is that among the open source CMS that I post about...both Drupal and WordPress have been churning out a lot since the New Year started. The release of Wordpress 2.0.7 is just a good example as any.

This just goes to show you how small of a world it is. Traffic to CMS Report is usually rather light over the weekend, but I noticed an increase in the number of people visiting the site Saturday and Sunday. These "new" visitors were coming from Lorelle VanFossen's WordPress blog. She recently posted an article on some of the features expected in the yet to be released WordPress 2.1.

Ryan Boren, one of the lead WordPress developers, has been releasing preview information on WordPress 2.1, along with some other well-know WordPress developers, testers, and users. Here are some teasers about WordPress 2.1, due out soon...

A debate that is going on among many CMS projects. Ryan Boren asks if it's time for Wordpress to drop support for MySQL 3.23?

WordPress 2.0.5 was released late last week. This new version of WordPress mainly contains bugfixes, security fixes, and some very minor enhancements. According to the original announcement at Wordpress.org, the fixes center around feeds, custom fields, and internationalization. Links to download WordPress 2.0.5 are available at the "official" WordPress 2 download page.

Lorelle VanFossen makes some great observations in his post with regards to which browser, Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2, work with Wordpress. Internet Explorer 7 was just released for Windows XP last week. If everything sticks to schedule, Firefox 2 will likely be out sometime this week.

Ms. VanFossen's article doesn't say it, but IE7 has been noticed to work better with AJAX type sites than IE6. Of course the original question though is how does IE7 compare with Firefox when running Wordpress?