Scott Bush

This may be a weird post but I simply couldn’t go on without singing WordPress’s praises. I use the open-source publishing platform for this blog, so if you have no idea what WP is, at least you know you’ve been seeing it.

Until a few days ago, I had been running version 2.1.2 of the software; I’m now reveling in version 2.5.1. Whereas it was useful and usable before, it’s now beautiful and slick. This version has a refined user interface on the administrative side, with a classy light-blue, white, and yellow color scheme. It now organizes post-related functions in a more sensible manner, including a more intuitive method to publish posts at a set time in the future. Another exceptional new feature is how easily you can add media: audio, visual, images, etc. There’s a much-improved media browser that clarifies how images will appear in posts by showing small visuals of how text will flow around images. It still auto-saves posts, too.

Besides blogs, WP is an excellent platform upon which to build regular websites. I’ve built one that way, and am working on another. It’s also great for distributed website projects such as a student newspaper like the Mountlake Terrace Hawkeye (they’re implementing a WP-based site for the online version of their paper). Student journalists are given “contributor” roles, allowing them to login and write stories (or copy and paste from the printed versions) but cannot publish them. That duty is left to those in “editor” or “admin” roles, who can edit and them publish the stories. The turn-key ability to leave comments is an automatic community for the school to discuss stories (comments should be moderated in that environment, given the penchant of high school students to write something shocking just because). There are many plug-ins to make WP-based sites even more functional, too: online forms, photo galleries, etc.

As I mentioned, this was going to be a weird post.