I lost a couple of comments today but thought I'd give my blog a Christmas present by updating to the latest build of Wordpress 2.0. Unfortunately, the upgrade script did not work as planned so I did a lazy dump, dropped all of my tables, and reinstalled wordpress from scratch. Here are a couple of key improvements I've noticed:
AJAX in the Admin
The new administrative interfaces breaks the nicely styles Tiger Style Interface plugin developed by Steve Smith. However the AJAX widgets and new stylesheet for the default worpress admin are a welcome addition.
File uploading given some detailed attention.
You can now upload files directly in the post:
A nice AJAX file upload block beneath the content window allows you to manage and upload images for your post. You can even drag the image into the content window.
The image management is actually incredibly robust automatically generating a thumbnail and then allowing you to delete, or browse any photos uploaded in the system during the editing process. Even cooler, clicking on a selected image brings up the option to insert it as a thumbnail that is linked or not linked to the image or the content page automatically generated for the given file. It's something you'll just have to try out for yourself but I'm very impressed with the techniques used in the administrative area of wordpress 2.0.
Squible doesn't break on WP 2.0
It looks like the install of Squible 2.5 is running without any modifications needed after upgrading to Wordpress 2.0. So there is certainly no harm in installing Wordpress 2.0, especially considering they have written documentation for upgrading your customized themes.
Wordpress the benchmark for CMS?
I think Wordpress is definitely the benchmark for how all other CSM apps will be judged. The community and features supporting the system are astounding. It should be very interesting to see how Typo developers in the Rails community as it already has an AJAX derived interface but lacks some essential file management that Wordpress 2.0 has just launched. Also the plug-ins and community for Typo still is much smaller so it's doubtful you'll find a Google-Analytics plugin for Typo the day after google announces it. Never the less slowly but surely it's getting there as well.
