[wp-hackers] Wordpress 1.5 downloads

[Scott Merrill]

David House wrote:
> Of course, that's not the real issue. No-one should prefer 1.5 to 2.0.
> If you have issues, list them and we'll fix them. I guess if we can't
> persuade you that 2.0 is better, that's cool, but the whole point of
> continuing development is to make something better. 

http://www.asymptomatic.net/2005/12/30/2188/not-installing-wordpress-20-why
I don't agree with all of the comments there; but I do agree with some
of them: WordPress 2.0 doesn't offer anything substantially better for
the average user.  A lot of plugins break, and though that's not
(necessarily) the fault of WordPress, it's a major blocker for adoption.

> Theoretically, 2.0
> is a few months worth of improvements to 1.5.2. (Naturally, it's not
> your fault if you prefer 1.5.2, that's not what I'm implying, I'm
> saying it's probably our fault)

*I* appreciate some of the improvements, because they make the things
that *I* do as a plugin developer smoother.  I'm not a hard-core
blogger; I don't play the SEO game; and I'm not trying to monetize my
blog.  As such, WordPress 2.0 is acceptable to me, but I'm not at all
"wowed" by what I was given in the 2.0 release.

A lot of poeple blog for money; or have more complicated usage patterns
than me.  These people don't get much benefit from the upgrade.
Contrast the list of 2.0 release features with the stuff in 1.5's release:
   http://wordpress.org/development/2005/12/wp2/
   http://wordpress.org/development/2005/02/strayhorn/

The features given to users in 1.5 were things _a lot_ of people wanted:
comment moderation, whitelisting, pages.
The features given to users in 2.0 are gloss: WYSIWYG editing, resizable
editing, post preview, header customizations.

Of the things that are substantially beneficial to users:
* import should be a one-time thing; so I'm sure it's appreciated but
it's not something people will use again and again -- especially people
upgrading from 1.5
* inline uploading is a great addition, but unfortunately it doesn't
allow the user to control the upload destination.  Hopefully this can be
revised for 2.1

Hopefully 2.1 can include things that make people _excited_ to upgrade.

-- 
skippy at skippy.net | http://skippy.net/

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