4 min read meta

Trying something new

Matt Haughey

on Sat, Oct 07, 2006

I've been meaning to redesign this site for a while, to set aside more screen space for writing, both to make it easier to read longer pieces for readers but also to help me focus more on just plain old writing instead of all the other junk I used to keep here. As I sat down to think about how I could wipe out what I had and start over again visually, I kept coming back to all the cool Wordpress themes I've seen lately, including the one you see powering this site.

Now, I would consider Ben and Mena Trott to be pretty close friends and I've helped write a book on Movable Type tweaking. I still use it for several other sites and don't plan on changing, but when it comes to personal websites, I've always wished for a simple way to share MT templates either through actual files or the API. I've requested it from SixApart for the past 3+ years and in the meantime, Wordpress came along with Themes and eventually every good web designer that wanted to see their work shared with millions flocked to it and started offering up downloadable Themes.

A few months ago when I was praising Vox I said I never wanted to work on another blog template file again and I was serious about that. Wordpress has a great theme system and while I think editing php templates is an even worse idea than custom Blogger/MT tag templates, I don't have to thanks to the thousands of free theme packs available online. I was somewhat reluctant to jump to Wordpress until I saw some 2.0 screenshots and heard good things from longtime MT-using friends. The last time I used WP, I had a lot of problems with the admin editing backend. I noticed a few things have been fixed but a lot of things still got stuck.

Here's a list of hang-ups I found when converting over. Some might read these and feel it's nitpicking or criticism, but I consider these bug reports:

- When searching google for info on importing a MT blog, I ended up at codex.wordpress.com with some instructions I followed only to find out the entire system has changed with the latest release. Since the docs are on the wordpress.com server, they should be updated to say "the following is for the 1.x version of Wordpress, go here to see Importing tips for Wordpress 2.x" or something like that. Adobe/Macromedia is great about this -- anytime I hit an old Coldfusion docs page I see a pointer to the latest version of that page for the latest release.

- I had to split my exported MT blog since PHP had a 1Mb upload limit on my server. That's a drag (I had to ask a friend how to do that) and I wish it used the API instead.

- To activate Akismet, it said I just needed an account (not a blog) at Wordpress.com to get an API key, but I couldn't get an API key unless I got a blog, which seems like a waste (and possibly a way to artificially inflate the subscription numbers at Wordpress.com or something).

- Plugins are activated in the Plugins area, but not set up there. Why? It makes no sense to me to activate something on one page, but have to jump to a submenu buried in the Options area to change settings on it. Why isn't there a Plugin Options submenu in Plugins? And why instead is there a way to tweak the actual PHP of the Plugins? Does any normal user really need that? Oh, it looks like Akismet is configured in the Plugins area, but nothing else I've added is.

- Where can I turn off comments by default on new posts? I don't see it anywhere in the Options area (I found it under Discussion options, which I guess is more specific (though I would think putting in the Writing options would make more sense) though the checkbox describing it sounds confusing to me "Allow people to post comments on the article" when really I want a "comments enabled/disabled by default". Fixed.

- I don't see anywhere to turn off or on Pings/Trackbacks system-wide or set defaults for it. Fixed.

- The feedburner plugin I installed doesn't auto-forward requests to Feedburner. I don't think it works well with a pre-existing Feedburner feed. I'm going to have to edit my .htaccess or templates to do it. Fixed: it worked five minutes later.

- Some custom styles (simple floats and margins) I applied to images in previous imported posts appear to be stripped on import. Dunno if that's MT or WP's doing.

- After I publish a post, I get sent to a blank Write New post page. Why not jump me to the edit page on the thing I just posted? Also, I see that the Manage page still has the Edit screen linked on one teeny tiny link marked Edit. The "View" link made me think that would allow me to view the post in the Manage interface, but instead pops me out to the live post on my blog. Why not link the full title of the post to the editing interface? Why else would I be in the Manage section unless I wanted to edit/delete my posts?

- Why isn't the Categories widget expanded by default? Why do I have to tweak that every time I make a post? Why is "Uncategorized" an actual category?

- In the wysiwyg interface, when you go to add a link, the popup has two buttons at the bottom, one to insert the link and the other to cancel. The Cancel button is on the lower right, where all the save buttons are located in Wordpress, but you have to click the one on the left instead to actually save it. Intuitively, I almost hit cancel every time.

- Widgets are kind of a mess. I had to download it and activate it like a plugin, then go to Presentation to edit (another weird plugin on one page, options on another). There's no Flickr widget by default even though the first Google results for flickr widget say it is included. My other results ended up with 404s on download sites. There doesn't seem to be a user-friendly widget gallery, as the plugin itself dumps me into some programmer widget trunk page which makes no sense.