New Design, New WordPress
January 15th, 2006 · site
I apologize for the lack of updates these past weeks, but I wasn’t happy with the site’s design, and it compelled me to redesign the site before adding more content. Well, inspiration finally hit me last night, and voila! Here’s the new Zarjay.net. I hope you like it.
Shortly after creating the new design, I noticed that a new version of WordPress was released. I’ve been using version 1.5.2, but I thought I might as well upgrade, since I was already upgrading the site design. For those of you web authors out there using WordPress, I’d recommend ugrading to 2.0. It’s pretty sweet.
What’s So New about WordPress 2.0?
There are a couple new things that make 2.0 so much better than its predecessors:
- AJAX Equipped – WordPress has now been glitsified with AJAX, which basically makes everything act a lot cooler. Options in the administration panel can now be adjusted and moved around the screen; the posting text area is now resizable, and using WordPress has just become much easier (if that’s possible). If you don’t know what AJAX is or what it does, log onto your Gmail account and try using it with the “basic HTML” option turned on. Gmail just isn’t as nice without AJAX, now is it?
- WYSIWYG Editor – In older versions of WordPress, the editor used to write posts adds <p> tags for you and has a few buttons to help you a long with your authoring experience. The old editor is still available, but now there’s a rich editor for those who’ve always wanted one. Designed specifically for the XHTML clique, it’s not perfect, but it gets the job done. Best of all, for the nitpicky, such as myself, there’s an “HTML” button that lets you manually edit the HTML. I give this new feature an A+.
- Managing File Uploads – I haven’t fully explore this feature yet, but this should make my life easier in regards to uploading files like images, sounds, and videos. Previous versions of WordPress didn’t have much in the way of managing uploads, but several plugins are available to add that feature. I don’t need a plugin for that anymore with 2.0.
- User Roles – What would you do if you wanted multiple users on your WordPress installation? You would add each new user and give them a particular level of control. There are about 9 or 10 levels total, and it can get tedious deciding what level at which you want to set each user. In 2.0, levels are thrown out the window, and user roles are introduced, which allow you to set a user as administrator, editor, author, subscriber, etc.
I’m sure there are many more features rolled up in the new version, but the ones I listed above are the ones that interested me the most.
I still have a few kinks to work out with this new design, but overall, I’m happy with my new site design and the new WordPress 2.0.
