If you even lightly press the “talk technology” button on Alex, you are more than likely going to get a lot of gushing from me about WordPress.
Since I first found WordPress 2.0 in the early summer, I’ve been amazed at what I, last a developer 15 years ago, could do with this industrial-strength, multi-user content management and publishing system.
It’s so astonishingly simple in concept…so amazingly easy to implement that I’ve had great success in getting people to use it. And, as a further testament to its ease of use, I’ve even seen what can charitably be described as low- to no-talent geeks convince themselves they’re the next Torvalds because of the instant feeling of success one gets using WordPress.
But now, even when I thought it couldn’t get any better, along comes WordPress 2.1. Following the instructions for upgrading took about an hour (much of that spent backing up files). After that, everything worked perfectly.
This is my first post in WordPress 2.1 and I’ve already fallen in love even though I’ve only been using it for about 10 minutes.
When you’ve been around software as long as I have there are a couple of ways that you can tell right away when something “has it.” In WordPress 2.1, those indications are all over the product. From the fact that it upgrades more easily than any complex publishing system has a right to, to the small stuff like a “last saved” indicator in the editor and subtle yet massive improvements in the UI that don’t make the user re-learn anything, WordPress 2.1 might be the most impressive and accessible achievement the open-source community has created.
Matt and the team: congratulations, and thank you very much.
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