WordPress 3.1
Greetings once again friends. I was knocking it out the park with the blogging daily here and weekly on my other blogs up through early February. Would like to say I got bogged down with Valentines and Birthdays and such, and though I did somewhat, reality is I also had some other things I had to get done and was just generally lazy on top of it. Regardless though, I am ready to ground at a run again and WordPress has finally released the much-anticipated 3.1 version of the all around best CMS. Yes, I said CMS. And yes I also said best of all that are out there. Okay, maybe best is pushing it just a bit, though I am feeling that way overall these days – but I will say hands down most widely used these days.
What is in the 3.1 release of WordPress that was not there before? The biggest thing that a user will see is the awesome menu bar across the top of the screen if you load the main page and are logged in, either directly or from cached information/automatic login tools. The little menu bar gives you several options including a quick little icon of the logged in user (I suppose to make sure you are yourself). Next is the personalized menu (your login name) that lets you change your profile, log off or bring up the full dashboard. Third is the Add New menu, that lets you add new posts or pages. Comments is just a quick link to the comments and Appearance lets you alter the appearance via the changing widgets or menus. Lastly there are options for Updates, which dynamically shows when and how many updates you have pending and small box that shows traffic by hour for the last 24 (I think that is what it shows at least). If you are actually looking at a post you get the additional quick links at the top for editing the post and a short-link URL generator. All of these are of course only shown to the appropriate level of logged in user (which is what lead to some of the security updates).
Now, because I can complain a little bit and often do. Why didn’t they incorporate a view/show current drafts under the Add menu (guess the New would have to be dropped). Also, is this admin toolbar customizable? That would solve my problem above and allow me a look at a few different options.
Other things that were in the release are a lot of security patches (most of which were released for 3.0 as 3.01, 3.02, etc. There were a lot of other bug patches, but nothing that really jumps out or is something you are going to see like the admin bar (what the menu bar alluded to above is called). There are a couple of things that were mentioned, like a new admin theme (not something I really care about), redesigned linking workflow (which is supposed to make internal linking better, quicker, and easier – and I am curious to see how this works), and a streamlined writing screen that hides some option boxes for the easily intimated.
There are also a ton of things aimed at developers, which I will not go into and similar a few more aimed at making the WordPress platform have more CMS types of capabilities.
Speaking of the CMS thing, it is truly is a CMS and has been for several versions now. Sure, it is a blog-centric CMS, but there really is no limit to what you can do with it these days, especially given all the plugins that are available. Sure, there are occasions when I might still consider doing something in Joomla, but then again I would be hard pressed to come up with on the spur of the moment. My comment in the opening about the most widely used is actual fact based on computer robot surveys of what back-end systems are being used.
One last thing about the blogging schedule… This week we are going to try, and with re-tripled effort, to get a post in here daily. Posts will typically be written the night before but will be scheduled for 8:00 am EST the following morning. I will also being doing similar with a weekly schedule at 8:00 am EST each Monday at eligius.org, equinegames.com, and travellerhavensfarms.com.
** – Image from lonewolflibrarian.wordpress.com.
