There are a growing list of things that I already hate about WordPress 2.7.  Most of them are minor issues that can either be ignored or simply written off as quirks I don’t really need to worry about for my style of blogging.  The major issue is still the layout.

Wordpress 2.7 Write Screen. Click to open full size in new frame or window.

This is not some minor petty concern. This is flat out bad design.  Any blogger worthy of the name is using some plugins and other tools on the administration side of the blog.  This is as it should be, since customization has always been a prime feature of WordPress.  I sincerely hope someone soon comes up with an administration plugin to fix the layout flaws.

Here is the major problem with WordPress 2.7.  As you will notice in the full screen image all of the internal links for WordPress 2.7 have moved to the left hand side of the screen.  in western languages we read from left to right meaning the most important or most often used information should always be put at the top left of our viewing area.  Links to the dashboard and everything else on the administration side of things clutters your field of view while posting.  There is a good chance I will be using ScribeFire even more than I have previously, because of this layout flaw.

Getting to post through scribefire doesn’t make the problems all better with a soft kiss from the open source faeries.  Writing a proper post in requires more than you typing in a few lines of text putting in a picture and calling it good.  There are all sorts of things you need your write window for, that scribefire can’t do.  Second problem with having the internal linking on the far left of the screen is the scroll bars for most of us are on the far right of the screen.  This means mousing clear across the screen to get to the links and then mousing back to scroll down the new screen.  This is not only inefficient, it is ergonomically unsound.  it wouldn’t surprise me if this layout doesn’t cause some serious problems for people who already have hand and wrist problems.

While the layout of administration links sucks, I am not totally displeased with other things about Wordpress 2.7.  The write page is back to making good use of available space.  My categories by default are just to the right of the post box.  On top of that the components are modular and can be moved around the page.  This is great design, and a great feature for those of us who use certain things far more than others.

In the end you will either love this design, or you will hate it.  Either way though if you are serious about your blogging then WordPress is still your best option and WordPress 2.7 will be the platform they keep the security fixes up to date on, so you will use it.

For those who have been eagerly anticipating the release of Wordpress 2.7, it is getting closer and closer. For those of you dreading a new release, let me say I am with you. I finally got around to installing the latest build of Wordpress 2.7 and let’s just say this is not going to make a lot of people happy.

First off is the dashboard setup.

If you didn’t care for the way the screwed things up going from 2.3 to 2.5 let me say, you are going to hate these changes even more.  I am unsure what kind of mentality actually is going on here.  It is like they have brought in design consultants from the auto industry and Microsoft who said ’screw with the way it looks and the general layout of everything, if we confuse the user with something shiny and new we can blame any problems on operator errors’.  Thankfully Wordpress doesn’t charge for tech support or we would all be fucked.

They get an F for the new radical design.  Design shifts need to be gradual during the same version release.  This is the kind of thing you implement between version 2 and 3 or 2,3, and 4.  I will save the rest of the grade when they finally release it.  Unless you are a masochist I really suggest you avoid downloading it today.

The first thing you notice about any blog is the theme. If you have played with as many of them as I have you start to recognize where they came from too. Most of them I see unfortunately come from stock sites leaving very little in the way of personalization. I run one basic design, a post/page column and a single sidebar with pull down menus at the top. While all three of my blogs have the same fundamental layout, they don’t lack for personalization.

I will get into the actual process of creating a theme in the next post but I am assigning homework.

• Find 10 blogs and decided what you like about them visually.
• Decided what you want to incorporate with your blog and why.
• There is extra credit points if you bring me a cool widget I have never seen before!

I modified the original LiveJournal CrossPosting plugin and have had it sitting on Brad’s Tiny World since the day 2.5 came out. It is a rather handy tool to have as cross posting your blog entries to your LJ page certainly brings in more traffic without any extra work. With the move going on at Tiny World I am bringing the plugin over here.

LiveJournal XP WordPress25

WordPress 2.5 seems to be more particular than early releases to coding errors.  One possible result is the loss of sidebars and footers.  Elezend asked about this very problem on Lorelle on Wordpress, then again at Brad’s Tiny World.  Elezend’s footer which contains MyBlogLog and Blog Catalog displays just up and disappeared upon upgrading.  Personally I think upgrading on day one of any software upgrade is a bad idea, but that is from years of going WTF and looking at frozen computer screens.

This is going to be a multistep fix and some trial and error So lets get started.

1. The first thing I want to try to make sure this is not a general theme problem is to remove the MyBlogLog and Blog Catalog coding
2.