Blog Building Experiment

This article details my first impressions, or first “WordPressions” of the WordPress blogging software package.  I chose to use WordPress to create this blog based primarily on seeing the results of other successful WordPress-driven blogs and having read a number of positive reviews.  Both of these factors instilled in me confidence that WordPress would provide the exact capabilities I sought from a blogging software package.  My basic criteria required something that would allow me to get things up and running quickly that didn’t compromise on flexibility and extendibility.  This article though, is not designed to promote WordPress but rather to give an account of my experiences with using the software having only recently launched a blog, so let’s get on with it.

The “Famous 5-Minute Installation”

If you look at the WordPress website’s installation documentation, you’d come across the “Famous 5-Minute Installation“.  Here you’ll be told that under most circumstances, installing WordPress is a very simple process and will take you less than 5 minutes to complete.  Through my own experience, I’ve found this estimation to be a tad bit optimistic.  It’s true - there wasn’t anything overly complex about installing WordPress, just niggling issues that turned the famous 5-minute install into my own version - the Infamous 90-Minute Install.  Admittedly though, the reason it took this long was in no way the fault of the WordPress software package. 

First of all, I had to establish how to go about create a MySQL database on my web hosting space.  This wasn’t overly difficult; it was simply time consuming establishing how to go about doing this using the control panel provided by my web host. 

Once I’d done this, I had some technical difficulties getting the WordPress software package files to upload to my web host’s server.  First of all, it was going incredibly slow.  I did some searching on Google and found out that this was because the Macromedia Dreamweaver FTP client I had been using was by default configured to upload files using Active FTP as opposed to Passive FTP.  This article won’t attempt to explain the difference between the two, but you should know that the two different versions of FTP do exist.  If you find you’re getting incredibly slow uploads, try and find out which version of FTP your FTP client is currently using.  Most web hosts will allow you to use passive FTP, although no doubt there are some cases where you must use Active FTP for whatever reason.

After uploading the files, I followed the installation instructions by going to the page http://www.blogbuildingexperiment.com/wp-admin/www.blogbuildingexperiment.com/wp-admin/install.php to start configuring my blog, only to find that I was not seeing anything much at all.  So, I then downloaded the FileZilla FTP client, installed it, and uploaded the WordPress package files all over again.  I tried the same address again in my Internet browser, and thankfully, this time round I got the screen I’d been expecting.  After this the rest of the installation process was quite simple as the WordPress software guided me step by step through the small amount of information I had to enter.

The moral of this installation story - you’ll probably need more than 5 minutes to install WordPress.  This probably won’t be due to any faults in the WordPress software but the associated hurdles you’ll inevitably have to overcome like those I’ve described above.  You may however strike it lucky and have no problems what so ever.

The Administrative User Interface

I’m happy to report that thus far I’ve found the WordPress administrative tools and interface to be organised quite well.  It’s easy to navigate between the administrative tools and the general layout is quite intuitive.  I found it didn’t take long before I’d familiarised myself with the basics of WordPress and gotten a feel for how things worked.  Admittedly I haven’t explored many of the available options and features of WordPress just yet, but starting out and writing posts like these has thus far been a relatively pain-free experience.

The Post Creator/Editor

When I say the Post Creator/Editor, I’m referring to the WordPress toolset that you use to write and edit your blog posts.  My personal writing preference when compiling documents more than a few hundred words long is usually to use Microsoft Word first, and then copy the content into another program if necessary.  I feel this gives me a better view of the document layout while I’m creating an article and I find all the tools in Microsoft Word to be very familiar. 

For all the posts that have appeared on this blog thus far, I’ve written them out in their entirety in Microsoft Word first before copy/pasting the content into the WordPress text editor.  I found that doing things this way often left me with uncertain results, where things like line returns (space between lines) were removed from my articles and other small niggling formatting issues became apparent.  However, I’ve now found a special button on the WordPress “advanced” toolbar that allows you to specify that the text your pasting is coming from Microsoft Word.  When using this button I’ve found that I haven’t gotten the same problems I was experiencing previously when pasting from a Microsoft Word document.

Another niggling issue I’ve had is with bullet points.  The first post I wrote on this site contained a bullet pointed three item list.  In the post editor view I could see the bullet points, but once the post was published they were no longer visible.  I tried viewing the page in a variety of browsers and found that it appears to be for the most part a browser compatibility problem.  Internet Explorer version 6 displayed the bullet points perfectly, Mozilla Firefox 2 displayed two small arrows rather than bullet points, and Internet Explorer version 7 displayed no bullet points at all.  No doubt there is a workaround or fix for this issue that I’m yet to find, but as the title of this article suggests, this article is designed to give “first impressions” of using the WordPress software.

Plugins

The last thing I wanted to briefly mention in this article is plugins.  One of the biggest reasons why the WordPress software is so extendible and customisable is because of plugins.  I’ve found the WordPress plugins manager very easy to use and configure plugins with.  For those not familiar with the term, a plugin is basically an additional software tool or feature that is “tacked on” to a main software package that provides some kind of enhancement.  As an example, one of the most popular plugins available is “Akismet”, which checks any written responses (comments) readers submit to your posts to determine if they look like spam or not. 

There’s a strong community of developers writing free plugins for WordPress that allow you to add on all kinds of neat features or tools to your blog.  An index of most of these plugins is maintained on the official WordPress website. The great thing about plugins is that they can also be “plugged-out”.  In other words, if you want to remove a feature, it’s as simple as disabling it.  This means that you don’t have to manually edit any code and then try and remember where you made the changes if you want to revert back to how things originally were.

Summing It All Up

Overall, my first impressions of the WordPress software have been very positive.  It provides a fantastic toolset and extendibility that allow users to start creating professional looking content in next to no time.  At the time of writing, Blog Building Experiment is what you might call the “vanilla” flavour of WordPress blogs.  Currently there’s been very little done in the way of customisation, so it may appear to look like many other start-up blogs that have been created using WordPress.  To put the extendibility and customisation possibilities of WordPress in perspective though, take a look at TechCrunch, created using WordPress and one of the top 5 most popular blogs on the Internet at time of writing.  As you’ll see, it looks nothing whatsoever like this “vanilla” flavoured blog.   

As I’ve been alluding to in this article, you may well come across one or two minor hitches getting your WordPress blog up and running.  Looking at it in perspective however, I’m very grateful that such a good tool exists that didn’t cost me a cent to purchase and has been predominately hassle free thus far.  WordPress is one of few pieces of open-source, free software that is actually quite easy to use and won’t leave you with a headache.  I’m somewhat of a WordPress neophyte who is still finding out about many of the features and plugins available. This article however has tried to portray WordPress through the eyes of a beginner.  As my knowledge of WordPress expands, I’ll continue to report back on my findings here on Blog Building Experiment.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 3:59 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.