WordPress 1.5

I don’t normally blog on techie details. Mostly because I’m not a techie. I do web design and basic programming for the same reason my dad works on his car: I can’t find anyone who will do it for me for free. But. Some things you just gotta blog about. WordPress 1.5 is one of them.

WP 1.5 is a vast improvement over 1.2. In lots of ways.

* **It’s faster.**
This is probably the first thing you’ll notice. There are a few links on the side bar that pull up from other sites and slow the page down, otherwise you’d see what you want almost as fast as clicking google. Apparently the WP motto – “code is poetry” has paid off. The program files for 1.5 are actually smaller than 1.2, despite a myriad of added features.

* **WP Pages**
This allows you to build normal web pages outside “the loop” of actual blog posts. The result: our lovely new (WIP) links on the top right. (Be sure and click the wishlist. It’s got all kinds of pertinent information!)

* **WP Themes**
¡ Muy importanté! Well, mostly for me, since this means (again in theory) that I can make comprehensive changes to the site layout without having to shut everything down in the process. Unfortunately, they left out some basic things I think they should have though of (like a preview option). Which leads me to my next set of points:

### Problems ###

* **Themes preview**
You probably didn’t notice the upgrade, unless you were one of the 3 people who tried to check the site *while we were upgrading*. This is because WordPress doesn’t have any system for checking the rollout until it’s already out there. So for about an hour, the site looked kind of like [this](http://binarybonsai.com/playground/) If you’re just updating the template, there are some measures you can take, but if you’re upgrading the site, there’s no way to really fiddle with it until it’s all out in public. As far as I know, the only proper way to roll out smoothly would be to keep two full copies of the website and do all your testing on site B. I don’t have that kind of time or moolah, so I don’t get to see the new site until I’ve deleted the old site.

WP Themes are a great improvement over the basic template system. They allow you to make much more detailed changes to the overall blog layout. They allow you to switch back and forth very quickly between different themes. Nevertheless, what good does it do to fiddle with the layout in a specially designed environment, if you can’t preview without implementing it on the front page of the blog?

The amazing thing is, it actually wouldn’t be so hard: WordPress supports dynamic file creation, which means it can create any kind of file structure it wants. Automatically. If it can do that on the public sphere, what’s to keep it from generating a “preview” file that reproduces what your blog would look like with that theme *without* changing what people are looking at on the front page?

Right now, Themes have two settings: ‘Current’ and ‘Other.’ What we need to have is a third category of theme: the *Test Theme*. The test theme would generate the weblog, using the test theme, under a subfolder category (say “http://mysite/test,” or even “wp-content/themes/test”). The thing is, we need to be able to see the full blown product before it ships out. How hard to figure is that? I’s is seriously tempted to create a plugin to do just that. I mean, how hard can it be?

Of course, the first thing Valerie said when she saw the blog was, “Ooh! I like this better!” Which, of course, only served to prove my [Piro](http://www.megatokyo.com/) skills were in prime gear. ([Ces](http://on-fragile-wings.blogspot.com/) would be so proud.) Actually, there are a few features there that could make a nice improvement in the current design, which has an unintended similitude to a [bachelor pad](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachelor_pad): Particularly the blue instead of gray, the white space where the words go, and the justified text formatting.

* **Links Update.**
This is probably a more noticeable problem. At least, it’s gotten a lot more attention at the [WP Support Forum](http://wordpress.org/support/topic.php?id=23457). The Links Update feature is one of the coolest features WordPress has. It basically turns your weblog into a part-time [RSS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_%28protocol%29) reader. For instance, the links to the right of this post should be listed in the order they were most recently updated, with posts in the last 24 hours in bold. Unfortunately, right now it’s broken, or more accurately, crippled.

WordPress made two major changes in the way it handles updating links:
First, they changed the name and location in the WP software for the file that actually does the updating. This means that my links did nothing for 3 days while I tried to figure what was the up-with-that. Mine was a pretty cheap fix. Instead of using fancy php code, created a direct link to the file. Presto change-o

Second, and probably more importantly, it changed the preferred site to check if a link had been updated. It would be insanely slow for WP to individually go to each site to see if it had been updated. So instead, nearly all blogs [ping](http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/P/ping.html) a notification site, like [weblogs.com](http://weblogs.com/) and [blo.gs](http://blo.gs/). WordPress then goes to one of these sites, checks it’s list with theirs and updates accordingly. Unfortunately, a lot of these sites are **V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W** and not very well maintained. So, [Dougal Campbell](http://dougal.gunters.org/) and [Matt Mullenweg](http://photomatt.net/) created [Ping-o-matic](http://pingomatic.com/) to Be Better. It’s faster, it’s cleaner, and it consolidates across the board to and from 20 or so other services. Now WP 1.5 looks to Ping-o-matic for its fix.

But… The haven’t completed all the integration. And most people currently don’t ping Ping-o-matic. The result is that currently, I have 3 sites that update correctly on the blogroll. Oh joy, oh rapture. Now, to get my blogroll to update properly, I need to either get it to check the old dead site (i.e. blogrolling.com), or I need to convince everybody to switch to Ping-o-Matic. Not good options, in my opinion.

I emailed the, erm, “overlords” at ping-0-matic and asked them what the workaround was supposed to be, since I don’t really want to be a pingomatic evangelist (they’re great, but they’re not that great), and I was pleased to get a reply the same day:

Well I would of course recommend evangelizing, but we do plan to expand checking to include blogs that ping weblogs.com, we just didn’t want that to hold up the release of WP 1.5.

So one day, pingomatic land will be a bustling, happy community, but right now it’s still a contstruction zone. In the mean time, I’m making plans to re-install the old links-update files. I haven’t read my blogroll in three days!!

Author: KB French

Formerly many things, including theology student, mime, jr. high Latin teacher, and Army logistics officer. Currently in the National Guard, and employed as a civilian... somewhere View all posts by KB French