Upgraded to WordPress 2

I am proud to announce that this web site is based on the latest stable version of WordPress. Go grab it from the official download page, while it’s still hot!

The administration panel has been revised and, as the developers say, it contains many modifications in the code structure so that plugin writers or code hackers will be able to work faster. But I guess the highlight of this release is the new editor, which makes editing posts in WordPress a pleasure. Furthermore, you can preview your drafts as they would appear on your site. This is really good! Until now, I used an external editor for my articles, actually bluefish, but I guess I’ll switch to the WP’s internal editor. I also consider the inclusion of the akismet plugin as a very good decision.

Apart from the fact that this release has made me a bigger WP fan, I had two minor problems and two disappointments with it so far.

The first problem was that I used to have some javascript code in the header.php file of my theme, so that my web site could escape from frames (yes, some people still have this bad habit…), but this code produced a severe issue with the draft previewer inside the wordpress editor. Whenever I tried to edit a draft, the javascript code did its magic, the page was redirected and I could only see the post’s preview. The wonderful people at the WordPress IRC channel suggested a solution, so here is how the “break out of frames” js code looks in my header.php file:

<?php if ( !is_preview() ) { ?>
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
if (parent.frames.length > 0)
{
parent.location.href = location.href;
}
-->
</script>
<?php } ?>

If you use the above code, make sure you place it inside the <head> HTML tags.

The second problem I had, which is actually a flaw of the internal editor, is that the user cannot “cut” and “paste” text using the browser’s context menu, because these commands are missing. I guess this will be fixed. Keyboard shortcut to “copy” and “cut” or “paste” text plus drag ‘n’ drop text editing work OK.

And here follow my disappointments.

The minor one is that a button to add the <code> tag in the post was removed from the internal editor, but I’ll try to fix this. The big one is that WordPress still does not include support for the Atom 1.0 feed specification. I cannot understand why this is delayed. Atom 0.3 is 100% deprecated.

Anyway, you can make you Atom feed 1.0 compliant if you follow the instructions in my relevant article. This article was written with the wp-atom.php file from WP v1.5.2 as a base, so do not follow the line references strictly when you edit your WPv2 wp-atom.php file. Except for the line references, the code is the same. I’ll edit this post shortly though.

Apart from all these, WordPress 2 is a great release. I have transferred all of my template modifications from the WP v1.5.2 NovoDrum theme to this one flawlessly and quickly by using the excellent graphical diff tool Meld.

Happy New Year and have fun!

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