It’s official, it’s on time- and it may confuse a lot of people.

It’s WordPress 2.1 and we’ve already launched one site using the new “static front page” system. Although this was possible with some hacks- it’s now an official feature- and a sort of nod back to a Web 1.5 world. The idea of a “static” front page is based on the idea that people will actually come to your URL based on something other than search- and are too stupid to look around a bit.

80% of your hits will come from search- and 40% of the people who know your URL will still type it into a search bar- so, the likelihood of them actually seeing your front page is very low.

Before you jump into the 2.1 world, make sure you do a complete backup of your site, theme and database- it does some things very different than 2.0. Some plugins will break- research each one that you consider key before taking the plunge. And even thought the developers are now announcing the next version will be released on April 23rd- be aware, the 2.0 codebase will be maintained until 2010.

The biggest changes (besides the static front page option) are the built in spell check, the new image handling tools (which have been seen on WordPress.com for quite a while), and the easy ability to switch between code and WYSIWG in the edit window.

How the new page configuration will work with RSS- and Google visibility will have to be looked at. For now, we’re moving slowly at switching sites over. We will have more info as time goes by. Here are the official users side changes from the DevBlog:
Development Blog › WordPress 2.1 Ella

• Autosave makes sure you never lose a post again.
• Our new tabbed editor allows you to switch between WYSIWYG and code editing instantly while writing a post.
• The lossless XML import and export makes it easy for you to move your content between WordPress blogs.
• Our completely redone visual editor also now includes spell checking.
• New search engine privacy option allows you take you to indicate your blog shouldn’t ping or be indexed by search engines like Google.
• You can set any “page” to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.
• Much more efficient database code, faster than previous versions. Domas Mituzas from MySQL went over all our queries with a fine-toothed comb.
• Links in your blogroll now support sub-categories and you can add categories on the fly.
• Redesigned login screen from the Shuttle project.
• More AJAX to make custom fields, moderation, deletions, and more all faster. My favorite is the comments page, which new lets you approve or unapprove things instantly.
• Pages can now be drafts, or private.
• Our admin has been refreshed to load faster and be more visually consistent.
• The dashboard now instantly and brings RSS feeds asynchronously in the background.
• Comment feeds now include all the comments, not just the last 10.
• Better internationalization and support for right-to-left languages.
• The upload manager lets you easily manage all your uploads pictures, video, and audio.
• A new version of the Akismet plugin is bundled.

Feel free to share your 2.1 experiences in the comments on this post.

If you have several hours to compare what we consider the two leading Content Management Systems out there- this thread on the Drupal site has it all- but this short paragraph summed it up pretty well:

WordPress vs Drupal; what’s in a reputation? | drupal.org
And here is where I raise the usability/user experience issue.
Wordpress got it by the hand. Not only it validates out of the box, the experience for a non-tech user is great. It was actually FUN getting it to work. It wobbles when it comes to the categories (too simple but it works anyway for basic stuff), it doesn’t have half the functionality offers, but within its reduced scope, it is solid, and so very easy to use, to install, to understand.

Drupal, on the other hand, is a great, great tool, I appreciate the enormous effort from a lot of very bright and willing people and i’ll be damned before turning my back on it (not just because of the functionality, but because of the spirit behind i), but I have to confess it has frustrated me endlessly..

The reason we believe in WordPress is the “Fun” part of work- it makes putting content on your site so easy that it doesn’t feel like work. We’ve been able to get non-technical people to admin WordPress sites quite easily- can’t say that for Drupal, yet.

One of the beautiful things about WordPress is that it creates valid code automatically for you (for the most part) and that should help you sleep well at night.

Not that most people understand what valid code is, or care- Google doesn’t (as proven in posts by Matt Cutts from Google). I seem to recall Matt citing something like less than 40% of sites actually validate.

For those of you who wonder- valid code is using perfect grammar and syntax for computers- not for us human beings. It can help with accessibility- which is important to those who count on it- and it helps with Google indexing your site- but, like a book that is written without any hint of the flavor of language- it can create very boring looking sites.

Mike Davidson coded ESPN.com before moving to newsvine.com– and he hates HTML generated typography so much- he invented a way around it- which can break “the standards”- so, he also decided to be a revolutionary- and create a standard breaking icon to put on his site- and explains his reasoning- and takes the heat of all geekdom. It’s a good read for those of you who understand webstandards- and should be enough to scare away the timid:

Mike Davidson: March to Your Own Standard
So what’s up with the little grey button at the bottom of this site? It is my official Invalidation Badge. It’s mere presence on every page of this site renders my entire domain XHTML 1.0 Non-Compliant. Invalid. Erroneous. Whatever you want to call it. Here are the various crimes this one line of code commits:

* An ampersand is not properly encoded
* An alt tag is missing
* An attribute called “myfavoritetag” is made up
* An attribute is missing quotes
* A script tag is missing its type and language attributes
* A non-closing tag is missing its trailing slash
* A tag is upper case… gasp!

By invalidating my entire site with this one line of code, I ensure that I am made aware the instant it matters. The instant this stuff starts to break anything in the real world, I will know. If I only had a few small errors on a few random pages around my site, I could easily miss the day when “the big switchover” happens and wind up with broken pages I don’t know about. And since this code is in the form of a server-side include, I can freely remove it with a few clicks.

It’s kind of like carrying a canary down a mine shaft with you. As long as the canary is alive and chirping, you know you’re okay for air. Actually, I guess it’s not really like that. read the rest of the article….