WordPress (the most advanced, easy to use and flexible free php-and-mysql powered blogging platform / content management script out there…) reached version 2. But it’s still in a beta phase. Anyway you can check out the official WordPress 2 Topic at the support forums and eventually grab your copy from there. I’ve installed it on my notebook and I’m testing it right now (thanks to the apache2triad bundle as usual for letting me use my notebook as a powerful apache powered server).

First Impressions
The installation process is straightforward as usual. You just set up your sql database, create the db user, put the data in the wp-config file (you can use the graphical-from-web interface too) and then run the installation script. Easy.

The first thing you’ll notice is that… well… you won’t notice anything at all… in fact pretty nothing changed. At least on the reader’s end. The template/theme is the usual Kubrick by Michael Heilemann. The style is clean, the header is blue. End of the story.

Diving into the brand new Dashboard
Once you’ve entered the dashboard you’ll be amazed! The font used here is cleaner than the previous one and the colors are white and blue. Nice scheme. Nice layout.

In the upper right part of the backend you’ll see your name with two options: “sign out” and “my profile”. Pretty self explanatory links. The “sign out” that was placed in the menu bar has been replaced by a super cool import feauture. Clicking on that link will open a page from which you’ll be able to import posts from blogger or from an RSS feed (pretty cool if you don’t have a blogger account but your old platform supported the feeds). Apart the import/logout entry, the menu is pretty the same.

Writing a Post
The Write section has new, devastating (I mean awesome) feautures. First of all a new WYSIWYG editor. I really don’t know if I like it or not but one of the best thing here is that you can actually disable it (though the option is redundant in either the options tab and in the users tab… be sure to uncheck both). If you use the visual rich editor you can take advantage of some of its interesting feautures like the “insert image” box. It’s going to be pretty useful when finished: you can insert the Image URL, Image description, Alignment, Dimensions, Border, Vertical and Horizontal space… Nice.

Another feauture that I appreciated are the floating, draggable and collapsable menu. They’re sooo cool! You can drag them up and down, change their positions as you like. Fantastic stuff. This way the write page became even smaller and clearer. Good job here.

Directly under the writing box there is the Upload Image box. Finally an easy and fast way to upload your post’s images (anyone here for ImageShack integration???)

One special note goes to the post preview. As you can see from the image above you can actually see the entire post page styled with the current blog’s theme. Fascinating stuff. That’s a real preview. Clicking the “edit” link on the upper left corner of the preview box will bring your browser’s view back to the editing box for a fast edit. I love it.

Backup Option Included
In the plugins section you can finally activate a Backup plugin which put a menu voice in the “Manage” link. From here you can download on your PC your precious database tables with all the nuts and bolts of your WP blog.

Theme Preview
Useful feauture here too. If you go into the presentation screen you’ll be able to “see” your installed themes. Obviously those are not real-time preview of the theme but simple screenshots that should be included into the theme’s packages by the author.

To select the new theme you only need to click the image preview. I have not tested my old (WP 1.5) themes for compatibility with WP 2. I guess they are ok anyway… at least the simple ones.

One thing I’ve noticed is the presence of a new Theme Options tab. It actually disappear as soon as you change theme from default to classic so I guess it’s a theme specific option. New themes may use such feauture or not.

Other Misc (but cool) Feautures
Another interesting feauture is the Askimet anti-spam plugin.

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web serivce to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use this service. You can review the spam it catches under “Manage� and it automatically deletes old spam after 15 days. Hat tip: Michael Hampton and Chris J. Davis for help with the plugin. By Matt Mullenweg.

What a pity that “All you need to start using it today is a WordPress.com API key. Sign up on WordPress.com to get an API key” and that WordPress.com is now Invite Only (they opened it up quite recently to tell the truth). Well… I have no idea why things are like this but I see a sort of commercial partnership here. Smelling really bad. Hope things will change because such tools are needed by the blogsphere.

The Users menu is basically the same but with a cleaner and more readable layout. Little stuff has been added here and there in the options tabs too. I liked the permalinks pre-made radio buttons with the most used options. Neat and fast.

Another note is for the caching system. Wordpress 2 comes with a nice cache system enabled by default. Yet it would be nice to have an option to turn it on or off. Anyway a cache is good for your server’s performances (if you don’t mind having strangely named folders here and there… with strangely named files inside of them)

You’re likely to find out more on Wordpress 2 by visiting the official wordpress 2 beta support forum.

Take time to download it and test it locally on your machine. I hope you’ll be pleased as I am by this fascinating script. Let’s wait for the final release. For what I’ve seen so far, it shouldn’t be out that late.

EDIT
There is a nice list of features I left out from this review on Asymptomatic. Please check it out because there is awesome stuff in that post.

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