Silicon Chisel

One of the best things to hit 2006 was the release of WordPress 2.0. Word Press was already a good blogger; maybe the best available. But the 2.0 release has made it even better. So good, in fact, that Yahoo! is now offering it as part of some of their hosting packages.

So what is so great about the new version? For starters, they restructured the admin console so it is cleaner, works better, and even looks better. A nice subtle use of fade effects around status messages so you are sure to notice the information confirming any updates you made.

There is also now a WYSIWYG editor included, so there is no need to know any HTML code or tag structure. While not a big deal to webmasters it will be to end-users who may not be so technically savvy. The editor
also now integrates with the upload manager, so its much easier to add pictures to articles.

WordPress retains the same general ease of use and flexibility as the prior versions. The URL and content structure are yours to arrange and configure as you see fit. And it is all pretty easy to manage.

The handling of comments is well done too. The system does a pretty good job at flagging likely spam and queueing it for moderation. There also mechanisms and plug-ins to hook into external spam-fighting services. So as your blog grows in popularity you can beef up security. 

WordPress 2.0 is solid enough that you can build all kinds of sites on top of it, including commercial ones. This is a boon to web developers as it means you can produce nice looking, full-featured sites in less time and then allow clients to manage their own content. Development time will mainly focus on configuring and installing themes and plug-ins.

Speaking of plug-ins, here are a few that are worth checking out:

Counterize - a nice statistics package which tracks hits and visitors, and plenty of options for displaying these within your template.

Kimili Flash Embed - if you intend to have Flash in your content, this is a must have. Note that there are Flash-based video and music players, so using these gets around the messy issues of those “other” media plug-ins.

Google Site Maps - generate site map .XML files for better Google searching.

PXS Mail Form - put up a contact form in 10 seconds.

Random Quotes - a nice thing to add to a blog is bits of wit and whimsey, this plug-in is database driven.