Thoughts on WordPress, Travelogue Plugins Used
Thought I'd ask you about what you think of WordPress. I'm finally getting around to rebuilding my websites, and I'll be using WordPress. Since they're essentially clean installs I'm starting with 2.6. I actually started with 2.5.1 on purpose so I could try out the automatic upgrade plugin and it worked flawlessly.
Anyway, I wanted your opinion on any tips/tricks or suggestions for Plugins. I will shamelessly steal your snapshots name for photo gallery, if you don't mind, and stick it in its own subdomain. I see you're using Gallery2 — I assume you're using the plugin that's made for it? I've been comparing Gallery2 and a "NextGEN" gallery. Gallery2 is far more robust but the feel of the other one is nicer, at least to me.
Anyway, we're both tech savvy so I thought you'd have some opinions after doing a complete rollout of a redeveloped site. I only wish I had someone who could do more professional graphic design from scratch, that's where my skills are lacking. I can edit photos but that's about it.
Thx,
-Erik
Craig's Response:
Hey Erik,
I've become a big WordPress fan in the past nine months or so, and would strongly recommend it as a blogging platform. It has the technical flexibility and userbase to go from idea to implementation with the least amount of effort.
That being said, I'm stuck on version 2.3.3, because there are bugs in the newest iterations (v2.5-2.6) that make it time prohibitive to upgrade. I always check the their internal bugs/development/ticket management system (http://trac.wordpress.org/) to see exactly what has changed, and what they've decided to skip before releasing a new version. Checking this, it turns out that the custom fields I use to control certain end user experiences are more or less busted, or aren't working the way they're suppose to be for many users (slated to be repaired at v2.9!).
Before upgrading major versions of WordPress (not the small, tertiary digit releases) it's important to go through an ensure your plugins are compatible with the new release. There's a good possibility that many won't support the new version — especially the more exotic plug-ins — resulting in broken site functionality after the switch. This can be a time consuming process.
What this essentially boils down to is that I could never be an early adopter for WordPress upgrades — I've simply to too many plugins running that take weeks for the developers to make compatible, if ever. But that's OK — because I enjoy having the choice to upgrade or not — not someone forcing it upon me. This work as they are, and when traveling I don't have hours to spend playing an fixing broken upgrades.
As for plug-ins, you can find a comprehensive list of those that I've got running for the Compendium here, which share quite a few of the same with the travelogue (as follows):
Add Meta Tags, 1.6
Akismet, 2.1.6
BM Custom Login, 1.3
Broken Link Checker, 0.4.1
Chunk Urls for WordPress, 2.0
Code Auto Escape, 2.0
Comment Quicktags +, 1.1
Delink Comment Author, 1.2
Dofollow, 2.1
Get Custom Field Values, 2.5
Google XML Sitemaps, 3.1.0.1
Gravatar, 1.1
IP 2 Nation, 1.1
Link Indication, 3.2
Move Comments, 1.0.0
MyDashboard, 0.3.1
No Self Pings, 0.2
Popularity Contest, 1.3b3
Post-Plugin Library, 2.5.0.10
Recent Comments, 2.5.0.10
Recent Posts, 2.5.0.10
Robots Meta, 3.0.2
SEO Title Tag, 2.2.1
Simple Trackback Validation, 2.1
Unfancy Quote, 2.0
Unique Comment Notify, 1.0
WordPress Database Backup, 2.1.5
WordPress Reports, 0.85
WordPress Reports Most Active Widget, 0.1
WP AJAX Edit Comments, v1.1.4.3
Many of the above I've personally modified (by hacking at the actual plugin code), and as you can see, I'm not using anything that ties into the Gallery2 install (because I use scripts I've written that create thumbnails from an image found on a specific photo page in the snapshots gallery). I use the 'external image block' of Gallery2 to display the recent photos added to the gallery (for a given country, passed along the query string) at the bottom of travelogue entries.
Hope this gives you a starting point, and a little insight!
//craig in slovakia
August 4, 2008
Keywords: e-mail
Brodie
August 4th, 2008
If you have shell access to your host, then updates of wordpress using subversion are a dream. So much easier than using the poxy, unreliable and slow unzip and FTP method. See the wordpress codex for details.