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Dear WordPress, A Response To Your Letter

Dear WordPress, A Response To Your Letter

Dear WordPress,

Today I received your letter regarding the new uploading and gallery functionality in WordPress 2.5. I also received the advance copy (aka 2.5 RC2) but have not been able to install it yet due to work related issues.

I do appreciate your letter though, and the walkthrough of the new image interface. Uploading multiple images looks like a breeze, and the gallery functionality looks splendid. I wish I had it back in 2006, but I will most certainly find good use of it in this year as well.

As I have said before, I remain skeptical of the new interface design. You can talk about Happy Cog all you want, but although I don’t doubt it being easy to use, I just don’t think it looks all that appealing. Better than today, mayhap, but not when it could – nay, should! – have been rivaling your competition, being Movable Type of course.

Speaking of which, I followed your disagreement with interest. I must confess, I have been thinking of giving in to the temptation of multiple blogs over one install, the one feature I feel you lack in your core WordPress system. Don’t get me started on MU, your sibling. She’s not nearly mature enough, I’m sorry to say.

Maybe the gallery functionality is already there, in your competition’s offerings, and maybe it isn’t. I don’t know, to tell the truth.

I was recently asked by an acquaintance to look into another publishing system. And I must tell you, dear WordPress, that I was tempted to do so. There are things within you that just isn’t working like I’d want it to. You are trying to change, but maybe it is so that you have become too old, that you need to refurbish from the ground up. I guess you are, following the new trends and all, what you read in magazine and surfing the internet.

You have always been a good listener. I still think so.

Again, thank you for your letter. I appreciate it, it is the way to speak to an old friend. Yes, I say old now, with the history we have together I feel I just can’t nor won’t give you up so easily. You shouldn’t take our friendship for granted of course, none of us should do that to anyone, since who knows what the future has in store for you, for us, for everyone?

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Still, you are my most loyal friend in the time of need.

I look forward to your visit soon.

Yours truly,
Thord Daniel Hedengren

View Comments (10)
  • I can’t say anything about 2.5, but I’m looking forward to giving it a run.

    I love WordPress too, but I’d love it to be more efficient, like Textpattern. There’s a considerable difference between the two when you compare how much more bandwidth is chewed by WordPress.

  • I also think the new interface is a bit tacky. I like how you can customize the feeds and such – but I absolutely HATE the overall color scheme and interface. The old one was so much better.

    I installed wordpress 2.5 a few days ago on my test server to check if my technorati links plugin was needed anymore. The plugin apparently is no longer needed, so I wrote up a quick post about changing the incoming links feed to technorati.

  • I don’t think it’s that bad, I am using it for 2 weeks not, I also was beta tester.

    Yes to be honest there must be few tweeks to be done here and there but overall I like it better then 2.0 .
    It all depends on what kind of wp blog you are running. Bloggers that don’t use media in blog posts I think its not that important, but for someone like me I think multi-media option is the key of blog posting in wp 2.5 :)

    ~Sincerely,
    ~LC.

  • I agree, it’s not that bad.

    When I first looked at the demo installation that some guy put up, I thought it looked horrible. Way too much padding everywhere, etc. The extranous padding was actually an outstanding ticket in the WordPress development tracker, and has been worked on (and will be tidied up before final release I’m sure).

    I’ve installed RC2 and to me the interface is fine. The colour scheme is actually very pleasant after using it for a bit, and I think it was my typically human knee-jerk reaction to change that made me look at it so negatively.

    Everything really is laid out a lot better now from a usability perspective. I’ve just built a whole bunch of pages and posts (pages are particularly easier to manage now), and it was a lot easier than with the old interface.

    My favourite thing is the way that the stuff is hidden until you activate it for that post, brought in via AJAX when you click ‘edit’ next to the post slug for example.

    My concluded opinion: the new interface is a step forward and people will grow to appreciate it once their initial shock and horror passes. :)

  • I’m interested in why previous users are so up in arms over the interface. Design wise, if it is colors that you don’t like, then change them. There is an interface that allows you to do that.

    Second, there has to be some rule against critiquing an application without formally using it. (I must admit that I’ve violated that rule plenty of times).

    I had some dissent about phpBB3, way back when it was in alpha, but was impressed by what the final result was and when I played around with it.

    I think users should embrace change, so the ‘cheese’ has moved. I suggest you move with it or at least change it.

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