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10 Things You Should Know about WordPress 2.0

Posted By Darren Rowse 26th of December 2005 Blogging Tools and Services 0 Comments

Aaron Brazell is from Baltimore, Maryland and leverages his influence as a blogger at various blogs to develop his (sometimes) convoluted opinions. He writes about Web 2.0 topics at Emerging Earth and keeps a personal and political blog at Technosailor.com

If you’ve been seriously blogging for any bit of time at all, you’ve heard of the juggernaut that is WordPress. WordPress, of course, is the most popular self-hosted blogging platform utilized by independent writers. The official launch of WordPress 2.0 is upon us and, no doubt, the blogosphere will be buzzing about its launch. As a tester of the product since the early days of the WordPress 2.0 alpha builds, I’ve watched, participated and even assisted in the development of this software.

While this entry might get a bit technical, it is only because thecoolest new features are under the hood. For new users who don’t feel like tinkering with code and expect a shiny new piece of software out of the box, fear not… you will not be disappointed. The software provides a much more interactive and user-friendly interface. And for those of you who love the color blue, you’re going to love the new admin panel!

However, if you want to get into the real glorious nitty gritty of what you can do, then read on!

Here are ten things you may or may not know that can be extremely beneficial to know about WordPress 2.0….

  1. Thumbnails of Downloaded Themes – In the past, whenever you’ve gone and looked for a shiny new theme for your WordPress blog, you might have had the luck of seeing the theme in action. However, I can’t be the only one who has looked at a theme created 6 months earlier and wondered what it looked like on a blog because the author had changed it since publishing. With WordPress 2.0, theme authors are being encouraged to include a screenshot, entitled screenshot.png, in the theme folder. By doing so, the thumbnail will be loaded for the blogger to see in his theme list prior to enabling!
  2. Capabilities and Roles – In previous versions of WordPress, users could be given ‘limited’ permissions by assigning user levels. User levels, in the past, have relied on a scale 0 to 10, with 10 having unlimited administrative permissions. Various levels in between allowed ‘guest’ bloggers or contributors to have appropriate rights on your blog. In WordPress 2.0, this has been completely revamped. Without going into a lot of repetitive details on the nature of the various capabilities (Ryan explains capabilities and roles in great detail), the new features open up a whole new avenue of flexibility for plugin authors.

    For instance, there is an API function called current_user_can(), which allows the plugin author to match a currently logged in user against a list of capabilities. These capabilities range from ‘moderate_comments’ to ‘publish_posts’. Ryan’s article has the entire list, but it can also be found at the bottom of the wp-admin/upgrade-schema.php file.

  3. Importing from Other Blogging Platforms – As WordPress becomes an even bigger entity with a higher profile, it’s likely more defectors will want to migrate their existing Blogger, Moveable Type or other style blog to WordPress. I certainly wouldn’t blame them. Old-style import scripts that were included with WordPress have been scrapped for a couple reasons. For one, the other platforms have changed over time and the importers no longer work or the changes to WordPress over time have required a new approach to getting user data into WordPress accurately and effectively. There’s also the little detail of shoddy or incomplete code.
  4. I, along with others, have taken to creating easy upgrade paths for folks coming from Textpattern, Blogger and Moveable Type. If you’re not on one of these platforms, but still want to come over to WordPress, the core software also permits import from an RSS feed!

    As a bonus, for readers who have been monitoring the merger of b5media and About Weblogs , you might be interested to know that the tool of choice is a custom Nucleus CMS importer that ultimately will be submitted to the WordPress core code. But that won’t make this release!

  5. Built In Caching – Caching is the idea of storing files for quicker page load time. The concept as a whole is not new. Browsers cache all the time. Internet Explorer uses Temporary Internet Files and Firefox has its own cache. These help individual users load pages faster, but does not help a site load faster across the board. With WordPress 2.0, caching is built in. Queries to the database are saved because, if a page or setting has been loaded once, it is stored on the server file system for quicker load for all users.

    This is generally beneficial but can also cause problems, particularly if you wish to move your blog from one folder to another (For instance, if you have had your blog in http://example.com/blog and wish to move it to a new folder such as http://example.com/wp). Because database options have been cached, WordPress still thinks it is at another location.

    To get around this, edit wp-config.php and add the following line before the closing '?>'.

    define('DISABLE_CACHE', true);

  6. Image Uploading – In previous version of WordPress, there was an “Upload” feature available through the admin menu. That menu item is no longer. It has been replaced with an uploader on the edit page. In theory, bloggers can upload images and then drag-and-drop the image into the post. Unfortunately, this feature has caused much heartburn for some testers. There are options to use a full-size image or a thumbnail in the entry, but either way in pre-release versions, this feature seems to be iffy at best with various platforms and browsers.  This will probably be an item that is improved upon, but for the time being, manually editing the HTML with specified dimensions is best practice.

    Also note that dragging and dropping images when not using the Rich Text Editor will only create a permalink to the image.

  7. Use WordPress for Social Networking – There are probably a thousand social networking tools out there – many of which have plugins for WordPress available to them.  Someof these are Flickr , del.icio.us or Digg.  However, WordPress has built-in integration with such a tool in that allows search engines understand your relationships with other bloggers.  It is called the XFN (XHTML Friends Network).  XFN allows bloggers to establish links in their link manager (blogroll) as “friend”, “co-worker” or “crush” among others. It even allows you to designate whether you’ve physically met the person.
  8. Hooks and Filters – Hooks and Filters are a boon for plugin developers. They are what allows plugin developers to modify the behavior of WordPRess without actually changing the core files. Of course, filters and hooks are not a new concept… there’s just more of them in WordPress 2.0. Filters are functions that do as they suggest – filter. Items like a subject header can be filtered through to create an effect or change the way an item is displayed. Hooks give the developer a way to ride the coat tails of an existing “element” (such as a header or the rendering of a post, etc) and perform an action of some sort. An example of this would be to have someone emailed whenever publish_post occurs. (Of course, this is already something that can be done so it is a poor example).
  9. Built in Anti-Spam – WordPress 2.0 now ships with Akismet, a built in spam-filter. I’ve been using Akismet spam filtering since October 25th, the day it was launched and I have had one spam comment make it through to my moderation queue. There are alot of other plugins that do spam filtering, but in the past it has often required blogs to use two or more plugins just to get a good grip on comment and trackback spam. There is one hitch though.  Akismet users will need to register for an API key in order to use it. It’s free and worth it.
  10. Don’t Use the Rich Text Editor – WordPress developers will likely scorn me when they read this, but it’s my entry, right?  WordPress 2.0 includes TinyMCE, a javascript Rich Text Editor that gives bloggers a familiar Microsoft Word-like editor complete with common shortcut keys like Ctrl-B for Bold, Ctrl-I for Italics, etc.

    There are a couple problems I see, as a web purist, with this approach. TinyMCE, though it will probably continue to be improved, creates really shoddy HTML in some cases. Empty tags, funky cut-and-paste, and the now-internally-infamous shoddy image feature makes it great for quick and dirty entries but poor for day-to-day usage. I don’t use Safari, the preferred browser for most Mac users, so I can’t be sure if it works yet for you Safari users, but last time I recall it didn’t.

  11. WordPress as a Content Management System – Suppose you like WordPress as a blogging tool and you wish to use it to run non-blog sites. This is a distinct possibility, and not necessarily WordPress 2.0 specific. In fact, I’ve been doing this for the past few years in one form or another.

    Let me give you an example of one such site. My father is a pastor at New Covenant Community Church in Audubon, New Jersey. (Feel free to visit. I’m sure he won’t mind!) This site is completely WordPress 2.0 driven and it doesn’t even resemble a blog! The question is, how did I accomplish this?

    Well, there’s a couple of things I did and I’ll bullet point them for quick reference.

    1. Because we wanted the front page to have a different layout than the rest of the site, we created a special template file called NCCC_Main_Page.php. To make it usable for our front page, we needed to add this block of code near the top (after the opening '<?php')
      /*
      Template Name: NCCC_Main_Page
      */
    2. We created a "page" with our home page content and selected the NCCC_Main_Page  template from the Page Template drop down.
    3. We then downloaded the Static Front Page plugin and followed the instructions to install it.
    4. We created the content for our home page and assigned it a page slug of "home" (Note: this is most easily done by assigning the page title of home and then changing it to something more useful after publishing)
    5. Because most non-blog sites, including NCCC’s, have a manageable number of pages, we were able to create Entries in WordPress and create a static menu using the entry permalinks. There are built-in functions and plugins to make larger amounts of content more manageable and automatic.
    6. As a bonus, we did create a non-blog blog of “Upcoming Events” by posting under a specific category. The permalink to this page was a mere category archive permalink with the specific category used in the archive call.  This provides added benefit of enabling an RSS feed of upcoming events.
About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. I can’t wait to get my grubby hands on 2.0. I’ve been a user and fanatic of WordPress for some time now. I’m only suprised its taken this long for WP to integrate some solid anti-spam code.

  2. WordPress 2.0 as content management? You could easily do that with 1.5. Check out http://www.duboisacademy.org

    home.php is amazing.

  3. Will they upgrade the free blogs as well in order to allow users to test it out?

    I liked the feel of word press, but was dissapointed in the lack of customization with it. One reason I love blogger is the fact I can experiement with the code and am heavily considering using it for other future sites.

    I hope Word Press is everything they say it’s going to be, as I have found very few blog software that can replace blogger.

  4. […] 25th, 2005 and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently notallowed. […]

  5. George says: 12/26/2005 at 12:36 pm

    Hidden Nook:

    The free wordpress.com blogs you are talking about is already using the 2.0 version.

  6. XFN has been in WordPress for quite a while (1.2 i think?) and while I’ve tagged my links with the information, I’ve yet to see the benefit of doing it.

    Its one of those things that sounds great for developers but no one is making worthwhile for the end user.

    Todd: WP 1.5’s moderation system has worked pretty well when it is loaded up with a decent amount of words. This is a pain for most users and so it was rarely done. Akismet just changes the hurdle. Instead of filling in a moderation queue, people have to get an API key through WordPress.com.

    Hidden Nook: Are you referring to WordPress.com blogs? It runs on a slightly different piece of code called WordPress MU (for Multi User). The parts that people usually want to play with (the admin interface for example) is identical though. If you want to play with plugins and theming, then for the time being, you still need to have your own hosted space.

  7. […] If you’re a WordPress user, you’ve probably heard that WordPress 2.0 is being released tomorrow (December 26th).  Problogger has a list of  10 Things You Should Know about WordPress 2.0.  The items that jumped out at me were […]

  8. […] Hey folks— Big things for after Christmas. Look for a major article on Problogger on Monday(ish) by yours truly (Edit: it’s live!). It’s all about WordPress 2.0 (which coincidentally launches Monday). I have plenty of pre-published content on Emerging Earth for the weekend. Entries will go live each day while I sit mindlessly numb over the holiday season. […]

  9. Great article Aaron–I think my 2.0 image heartburn has subsided. Thanks for all your patience and help!

  10. Will they upgrade the free blogs as well in order to allow users to test it out?

    I liked the feel of word press, but was dissapointed in the lack of customization with it. One reason I love blogger is the fact I can experiement with the code and am heavily considering using it for other future sites.

    I hope Word Press is everything they say it’s going to be, as I have found very few blog software that can replace blogger.

    That’s a wordpress.com limitation, not a standalone installation limitation. WordPress as downloaded and installed on one’s own server is completely different and far more extensible.

  11. Jon–

    You are correct. XFN is not a new feature and I should have qualified that. The point of pointing it out was because, when WP 1.5 was released social networking was not nearly as big as it is today. Today, it seems we are in “the golden age” of Social Networking and XFN plays a major role in that. It was worth highlighting as a feature.

  12. WordPress 2.0 Final Released!

    … Well, nearly. But it’s only a few days away now (supposed to be released on Dec 26th US time, which means Dec 27th AUS time)
    A couple of the new features look very promising, and you can bet within hours of it’s release I’ll…

  13. […] With the imminent release of WordPress 2.0, here are 10 things you should know about WP 2.0, along with list of what’s new. For people who have made the move, I would love to hear your experiences. […]

  14. […]Guest blogger Aaron Brazell on Problogger.net has posted an interesting story that describes 10 things you should know about that will appear in WordPress 2.0[…]

  15. wordpress is a ver good software

    HAPPY CHRISMAS TO ALL

  16. karthik says: 12/26/2005 at 7:03 pm

    I like wordpress software it has great features like Categories , templates customization etc. and now anti-spam code. I will be using wordpress on my new blog which i will create in 1 month.

    Happy christmas and happy new year to all

    check my blogs Cheap laptop review blog and Tech news Blog

  17. […] En Problogger, Darren Rowse nos explica 10 cosas que deberíamos conocer sobre WordPress 2.0 y, a continuación, las resumimos brevemente, aunque yo destacaría los puntos 5 y 9, aspectos que en mis pruebas también han resultado negativos: […]

  18. For homepage, I think there is an easier way than the workaround of 6 steps you had to do along with an extra plugin. Correct me if I am wrong. I saw the following here

    Then, the static page: How do I have a static page without changing the url of the blog? With WordPress 1.5, home.php got introduced. Add this file (with whatever static content you want) to your list of theme files and it supersedes blog posts, archives and pages,…

  19. Also, XFN was present earlier too.

    Dont you think signing up for a WP.com account to get the API key is not a good idea afterall.. Because we are anyways users of WP complete software, why is another account creation is being expected ? Just to increase user count on wp.com ?

  20. It is a great blog tool WordPress. If been trying Pivot, but thats not it. For the fun and for Blogs in English i ve been making up a Blog on WordPress.com using 2.0. Its ofcourse not so advanged as if you run it your self, but its interface is looking cool.

  21. Rk– I think getting an API key is worth it no matter how you do it. If it requires a WP.com account (as it does), then so be it. As I said, I’ve had one spam get through in over 2 months. That’s impressive, no?

    Home.php… yep, you’re right. But there’s other things you can do as well and there’s more than one thing I did for NCCC’s website. More than just a homepage.

    I already addressed XFN here.

  22. […] I’ve been a big fan of WordPress from the get-go, and WordPress 2.0 is looking even more promising. Check out “10 Things You Should Know About WordPress 2.0“. Items like a better user-management system, easier image upload/integration and a built-in spam filter could make blogging-life a bit easier. […]

  23. when is it coming out!? right now it is 10am december 26 in the US! shouldn’t it be out by now?

  24. Sometime today. I’m waiting just like you and I know the WordPress site was taken down for a bit last night to prepare for the launch. Just stay close by. Matt and Ryan are probably sleeping off a Christmas hangover. Don’t forget, it is only 10:30AM Central time and 8:30 AM Pacific time (where the devs are) at this moment.

  25. Thanks Aaron for clarification.

  26. Yep RK…

    That’s the beauty of WordPress. It is extremely flexible and thus, for just about anything you do, there’s more than one way to skin the cat.

  27. I disagree that users should automatically disable caching–it’s probably the biggest new feature you listed. WP crunches through a lot of databse calls and can be quite a stress on the server (just ask the B5 servers, if the pages of B5 sites were all static or cached it could easily run on a single server). How often do you change your URL? Not very, hopefully never. Perhaps turn off caching for a few days after the change to get new caches.

    One of the main reasons I’m sticking with MovableType is that it can produce static pages which really help out in high load. If I get Slashdotted during the middle of the night I don’t have to worry.

  28. Valid argument, Jon, but unfortunately most users new to WP 2.0 will not know that they have to wait A DAY for the cache to re-sync. They are going to think they have to go and manually hack the database which will screw things up even more. I’m not a new user and I spent 3 hours screwed up over this. MY recommendation stands to not use it. However, I’m sure, as I said in the article, that the caching will be improved and this recommendation won’t always be my recommendation. But for now, with the WordPress 2.0 release now seemingly underway (with the WP.org site down for “server move”), I don’t think it’s a good idea for new WP 2.0 users to have to deal with that.

  29. You mention “importing”…Any easy way to “export” out of WP?
    I don’t like being locked in :-)

  30. Now why would they provide that? ;)

    Seriously, though, most platforms offer import paths so it would really be incumbent on the destination software to provide a means to bring WordPress in… just like WordPress is providing a way to bring other systems in.

  31. […] read more | digg story […]

  32. They probably wouldn’t as they most likely want lockin ;-)

  33. […] Der problogger hat einen interessanten Artikel über WordPress 2.0 geschrieben. Und hier gibt es eine Liste der mit WordPress 2.0 kompatiblem Plugins. […]

  34. […] Via digg.com is a story about the Top 10 things you need to know about WordPress (which is what our beloved site is built on) here. […]

  35. There’s an easier way to do a static home page (easier for the person managing the home page, at least).

    Create a page using WP’s native page dealio. (Usually “Home”).
    Rename “index.php” and the main WP directory “wp-cms.php”
    Go to wp-includes/classes.php — find “index.php” and replace with “wp-cms.php”
    Regenerate permalinks
    Now create a new index.php. You’ll need the address to your home page (the one made in step one). For my case, it’s http://mysite.org/wp-cms.php?page_id=2. So, simply add the PHP: .

    Voilla, you have a home page that can be easily managed by the end user. Only downfall is having to rename “index.php” “wp-cms.php” and re-doing the classes.php change every time you upgrade WP.

  36. Pardon me, that PHP got cut off (duh, Sean!). Just use PHP include() to include the URI to your home page.

  37. Thanks for the nice rundown on the new features and capabilities of WP2.

  38. I have done the upgrade just a hour ago in not more than 20 minutes(just that long because i had to drink some coffee) the interface is looking cool(the old one as wel) for the rest its stil great.

  39. […] WordPess 2.0 is coming your way… 10 Things You Should Know about WordPress 2.0: Blog Tips at ProBlogger Aaron Brazell is from Baltimore, Maryland and leverages his influence as a blogger at various blogs to develop his (sometimes) convoluted opinions. He writes about Web 2.0 topics at Emerging Earth and keeps a personal and political blog at Technosailor.com […]

  40. […] Getting To Know WordPress. I’ve been waiting for the upgrade ever since I tested the beta. Tags […]

  41. Took me 5 mins to do the upgrade, nice and smooth here, just like all other updates. The admin interface looks nice and so does the AJAX :-)

  42. […] Despite some skepticism WordPress 2.0 comes with awesome new features and the whole upgrade process is pretty straightforward! […]

  43. […] El contenido de este post está basado en 10 Things You Should Know about WordPress 2.0, publicado por Darrem Rowse en ProBlogger. […]

  44. PS If anyone gets stuck or needs a hand, feel free to msg me on MSN Messenger, [email protected]

  45. […] UPDATE – Alec also noticed the upgrade to WordPress, and points to a list of 10 things you should know about WordPress 2.0. […]

  46. […] I have been reading about the WordPress 2.0 release on Darren Rowse’s Site ProBlogger.net. […]

  47. […] 10 Things You Should Know about WordPress 2.0 My blog is powered by WordPress, and they’ve just release version 2.0 which constitutes a major upgrade. […]

  48. […] Just earlier I was reading the article Darren posted about WordPress 2.0 entitled “10 Things You Should Know About WordPress 2.0“. It has been previously available as a beta version and now I found out from Yuga’s post, that as of today, WordPress 2.0 is officially released to the public. I am following Yuga’s recommendation and I won’t immediately upgrade my blog to 2.0 because it might affect the functionality of your plugins. I will wait for a few weeks or months until all the flaws and bugs have been discovered and fixed, then I will upgrade my blog. Permalink […]

  49. Just posted 5 little things I like about WordPress 2.0 which you might find useful.

  50. I strongly disagree with, “Don’t Use the Rich Text Editor”.

    TinyMCE is an excellent example of great cross-browser compatibilty for a javascript utility. No it’s not perfect, but I evaluated several other leading editing tools and found TinyMCE to be the overall best choice due to compatibility, support community, popularity (which will ensure future growth) and several other reasons.

    We’ve been using TinyMCE on the posting form of the EventSetter.com website for 6 months now. I can’t say enough good things about it. It is incredibly easy to incorporate into just about any website or CMS.

    As I said before, no it’s not perfect… but try and find a wothwhile javascript utility that is.

    Use TinyMCE, any problems will be minimal and they can generally be worked around.

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