Library Web Chic

I’ve been doing so research and reading on Wordpress 2.0 in order to decide if I want to upgrade or not. I’ve read the upgrade instructions and have be seriously considering upgrading soon. One of the reasons I’d really like to upgrade is that the new version includes a WYSIWYG editor. This would be really helpful to me when I’m including code, which I typically transfer into Dreamweaver then cut and paste the Dreamweaver generated code into Wordpress, that way all my < and > come across correctly. Other advantages of the new Wordpress include:

• the inclusion of a backup plugin
  
  
  This is good for me because I hate having to manually backup my Wordpress instance. Plus I don’t know if I have permissions to backup the MySQL database.
• An AJAX driven interface, so you can resize boxes as you are typing into them or add a catagory while working on a post without leaving that post
• Inline uploading - you can upload an image, video, MP3 while you are posting without having to bounce around to a different screen
• Better definition of user roles - I never new what the differences user levels 1 versus user level 3 meant. I guess neither did other because the new systems allows you to assign user roles like administrator, editor, contributor.

All of these feature make me want to upgrade as soon as I can.

However, in order to upgrade I need to check to see how many of my plugins will be broken by the process. There is a good page that lists the plugins that are compatible with Wordpress 2.0. It also has a section of plugins that don’t work and talks about how they behave (break). Currently there are four plugins that I use in my Wordpress instance:

• Dashboard Options - the site for this plugin seems to have disappear. It isn’t an essential plugin but one which I liked a lot because I used it to display relevant professional development links on my Dashboard for me to check. I’ll probably upgrade without it and then look for a replacement.
• PJW Wordpress Version Check - has been updated and let me know I needed to upgrade my version of Wordpress
• Run PHP - doesn’t work quite right. The Plug-in site says that “Of all PHP execution plugins only Exec-PHP (http://soeren-weber.net/post/2005/08/18/50/) and WP-Exec (http://www.navidazimi.com/projects/wp-exec/) seems to work. With RunPHP (http://svn.wp-plugins.org/runphp/) & PHP Exec (http://priyadi.net/archives/2005/03/02/wordpress-php-exec-plugin/) the processing when posts/pages are added seems to sanitize the current methods used by these plugins. If you’d prefer using RunPHP (and possibly PHP Exec) anyway, turn off “Users should use the visual rich editor by default” in Options –> Writing.”
  
  
  Oh well, I’ll probably try one of the other plugins to get the PHP code I have inserted in some of my pages to work.
• WP-ContactForm - This has been updated. Using this plugin eliminated PHP from at least one page of my site.

I’m hoping that perhaps this weekend I will get a chance to upgrade, but I’ve been meaning to a bunch of other stuff on my blog for a while and seem to always get sidetracked with house stuff! When I do get the upgrade done, I’ll let everyone know how it went and what I think of the new version.