Redecorating…and the joys of WordPress

I have just upgraded to WordPress 2.3 which was made literally as simple as clicking a button by my fine hosts, dreamhost. Most everything seems to have gone smoothly, but you may notice that a few bits and bobs have disappeared from the sidebar for the time being. These will return soon, in addition to a cornucopia of new goodies – in fact I’ve gone for a three-column layout so I can fit loads more crap functionality onto the blog.

Adding lots of pointless blog bling (‘blong’? – maybe not…) is made trivially easy as I am using the most excellent K2 theme which, along with being super-easy to customize (thanks to the ‘styles’ features which allows you to create  a new stylesheet which overrides the k2 defaults without touching the core files) and ‘pimp out’ (thanks to the kick-ass k2-sidebar manager which lets you drag-and-drop modules into the sidebars, set which pages they appear on, and more – including running PHP scripts inside the page)  also features some rather nifty , jquery-powered AJAX-y functionality – check out the advanced search or click the ‘«older’ link at top of page for two examples.

Something that really excites me about WordPress (particularly in combination with K2) is that it is evolving beyond being just a blogging platform to being ideal (in my opinion) as a lightweight CMS, due mainly to the inclusion of Pages (static pages which exist independently from blog post chronology), a massive library of plug-ins which allow you to add a wide array of functionality, and a clear and intuitive templating system which a pseudo-geek like me with very limited scripting/development skills can get my head around. It allows me to very rapidly develop a CMS-powered site in a couple of days which I think would be hard to tell is actually powered by ‘blogging software’. For  a couple of examples, check out (staging versions of) blueprint exhibitions and eslocal, both powered by WordPress plus a customised K2 theme, plus a few plugins and custom templates. WP may not be any good for more complex, high-traffic sites, but for an independent designer/developer (i.e. me) making small-to-medium sites it is a godsend.

And so but anyway, expect this site to grow and mutate and become more than ‘just a blog’ in the coming months, although having said that I am happy to find that I am getting enthused about blogging again in a way I haven’t been for the last while.

Finally, please check out my friend Mikey Lambe‘s new site Deep Kyoto (recently upgraded to WP2.3 and K2, natch) which is his one-man alternative guide to the good people and good places to be found in that beautiful city.

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