Word Press Is Getting It Right!

I wrote back on April 4th about Word Press being broken. Now that I have upgraded the Chase Global Media Blog to Word Press Version 2.5, this year’s trend in web design did not go un-noticed. To all who are wondering what the web looks like after the intense Web 2.0 Styles in 2007, it’s all gone pastel. Beauty is still in the eye of the beholder, but pastels were picked not because of designer preferences, but because it is easier on the eyes for the reader.  And with this, Word Press has gone from solid colors in the Admin Panel to soft pastels. A nice touch for our eyes as well.

But there is alot of new functionality to this CMS. I won’t say, but I can tell you the users of Word Press have definitley been shopping around and have taken some very limited yet successful aspects from another very popular CMS. And has Matt and the boys adopt these functions into Word Press. I say very limited, because from where we are looking, our new CMS which is part of our new software training platform is only a sliver of what we have adopted. Yes,m Word Press is nice and yes it is free. But with free comes a huge hidden cost. The one where you have to hire coders to re-arrange everything to get what you want. It’s like giving you a car, and having you pay five dollars a gallon for gas and ten thousand a year for insurance. Sure free sound great at the beginning, but the amount of time and educational investment require to make it fly will be more than a couple of years at a local tech college.

This is why we let it go last February. We opted to pay small amounts for each function which attracted paid coders for each and pop them in and out as we see fit. Yesd they are alot like plugins, but because they are bought, you know someone is at least working on any issues as they arise. Where as free is someone who is codding in spare time away from their real job. So what gives with the snow picture above?

Well, these are brain childs. All are very proficient Microsoft Power Point Producers. The tallest child just got accepted into a fast track university program from the second best university in our country. Not bad for eleven years old going on…? The second tallest is a whiz at math and media design. Only one of three students in the past twenty some odd years to not only understand what is being taught first time out. But able to turn around at her teacher’s request and teach the rest of the class. Not bad for nine years old. The shortest child can whip up a power point presentation on the fly with full animation and sound. Perfect grades and not bad for her first year in elementary school.  Their Mom teaches them all and works for Bryxen Software, Inc. And I’m lucky to be a integral part of their lives as Father and Husband.

So what gives with the winter picture. Nothing much, except as I mentioned in a previous article last week. Edmonton is great for Internet startups, because it is winter here for ten and a half months. There is no spring. Sumer just shows up instantly here and everything melts in a huge run off. Then for one and a half months its summer. Then fall is more like a wind riping the yellow and green leaves off the trees. Followed by a snow blizzard and we are back inside again. Both Web-Ex and defunct Worldcom came out of Edmonton, among many other startups.  If you think te picture was shot last winter, you would have been thinking of where you possibly live. No, this picture was shot today, this morning on April 21st, 2008. Just before taking the brain childs to school.  The temperature is -22 Celcius with wind chill.

But with the great working environment inside, I was finally able to upgrade Word Press. And like so many CMS packages, they too got the upgrade install wrong. I have learned through careful analysis, what a correct CMS package looks like. So I repackaged the Word Press Version 2.5 and it now takes away all the critical nonsense which is alway posted on the Word Press Upgrade Page. They are not the only ones. Just another CMS Developer Team which thinks Word Press is installed by programmers. This is brought to you by the same people who think computers are still for consumers. Only since Vista and Apple’s iMacs have computers only been for consumers. Apple’s is truly a consumer product, while Microsoft’s OS is still a far cry from consumer friendly. Soon they should get it right in three years.

And so, what’s wrong with Word Press is really still, why do consumers still think Word Press is all about free and easy. To which neither is as accurate as to say green house gases keep us warm in the winter. A picture tells a thousand words and now you understand why the winter picture in late April is about as normal as Word Press is normal for consumer or intermediate webmasters. Snow in late April makes no sense, but there it is. Word Press Version 2.5 as pastel pretty as it is, still makes no sense to offer it as free or to consumers and intermediate webmasters. But as a coder, I like the change. It’s fresh and a bit more useful. Unfortunately, people need to make a living, and other content management systems are rising in popularity. The reason is new Internet users and new webmasters and even consumers are finding other platforms more consumer friendly. Now back to coding.