Pros and Cons of WP 2.1 (IMHO)

  • I switched to WP 2.1 a week ago, played around with it a bit and then went live. Here are some of my thoughts about the new version:

    Me likes:
    1. Auto-save posts. I’ve lost a few posts in older WP versions because there was no autosave and I never found an autosave plugin.
    2. I like the toggle tabs between visual editor and code editor.
    3. In the future I plan to use the feature that lets me set a particular page as the home page without moving WP into a subdirectory.

    Me no likes:
    1. Feed is cut off at the <–MORE–> tag without an option to override. I don’t so much mind that it’s cut off there because I use the More tag infrequently (1/5 posts) but it confuses some of my subscribers.

    I haven’t noticed any other new features yet, nor have I had any problems.

    Thanks to everyone who worked hard to produce 2.1.

Viewing 2 replies - 16 through 17 (of 17 total)

  • “It makes the code a lot cleaner, a lot more expandable, and future-compatible.”

    “Well, the main reason is that… wp_list_categories()… allows… several possible parameters… which can be stacked…”

    Now that is an explanation, written in plain English, which sounds like a reasonable justification — in contrast to the Codex and 2.1 announcements which I saw as simply saying 1 function changed to another function, without fair-warning of the likely impact on Ye Olde Default Theme.

    A user-friendly sentence like that should be in the Announcement when something like this is changed (something which affects the presentation of many ordinary users’ themes if they upgrade the WP without totally overwriting their theme). The majority of WP users (I would guess 95%) are not code-hackers like a lot of people on this forum, don’t know what a “function” is, and if they’re like me – just want to know what the changes are, how to work-around, and basically why. Especially if it breaks themes. Especially the Default theme.

    The paragraph you wrote before that – thanks but I don’t get it, but I did understand that the new wp-list-categories takes multiple arguments (and I’ve learned that arguments is code-speak for what normal people call Options; a more sophisticated but sometimes murky word is “parameters”). Options = Good, so that’s good news as well.

    For the benefit of HandySolo, no exclamation marks were harmed in the production of this reply.

    Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    www.remarpro.com Admin

    The problem is that the reasoning behind these changes is all internal. It’s hard to explain it without delving into the internal code, layout, and logic of the system. It doesn’t offer any immediately obvious benefits to the user or theme author. It offers benefits to the code authors and people adding features and trying to maintain the thing and create new versions.

    As for the Default theme, the Default theme has been changed many times too. If you’re not upgrading your theme along with everything else, well, you’re not going to get the newest changes.

    The latest Default theme does indeed use wp_list_categories().

Viewing 2 replies - 16 through 17 (of 17 total)
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