Posted January 13th, 2010 at 12:13PMI’ve been playing with the most recent version of WordPress – 2.9.x at this point – and have been pleasantly surprised at each turn by some of the recent changes. The sad thing is I don’t think any of these are “new”; it’s just that I haven’t spent much time back here lately.
- The WYSIWYG editor seems fully functional and reliable. I’ve always used the HTML editor (posts around here tend to be simple anyway). But I could get used to the new editor, especially with the fullscreen mode! (I don’t have much good to say about my PowerBook’s 1024×768 12″ display, going on five years old.)
- I’m also just beginning to install and upgrade themes, plug-ins, and WP itself from the admin backend, and it is a godsend.
- Along the same lines, I discovered the Atahualpa theme, which as a “theme framework” adds a whole new layer of accessibility with complete step-by-step access and control of site design through the WP backend.
- And when reading this, keep in mind that I connect to the internet at a blazing 26.4 kbps. The WP admin still loads flawlessly and skipping my end of the connection speeds up installs / upgrades / theming exponentially.
So I’m intent on making MULTIPLE posts in January. There are a few topics on the burner and I notice the old Twitter hasn’t been updated in nearly two months. Huh. I’d like to refurb the pages, particularly the links and colophon. I’m definitely getting the itch to make some design changes. I’ll either polish the hell out of the current theme (by Ahren Ahimsa), or move to Atahualpa.
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Comment Sections In ’08
It struck me awhile back how the now ubiquitous comment section at the end of articles on virtually every website is a recent phenom. It wasn’t that popular even four years ago during the last presidential cycle. This got me thinking on the purpose and impact of these comments. Is anyone ever swayed by a comment posted on a news site? The potential is there to have thoughtful replies, but to date I’ve seen nothing but partisans spewing vitriol, whose idea of clever is to invent nicknames of candidates – “McSame,” “Nobama.” There are occasional sane and levelheaded posts, but these are the exception to the rule.
At face value no one ought to pay any attention to this drivel. But subconsciously it must devalue the conversation, the same way any attention on non-issues does. I tend to read the first page or two of comments on articles I’ve read, but now I’m wondering whether or not this is just polluting my mind.
There are people who pay close attention to these comment sections. You can watch rivals sniping one another, jumping from article to article. Never in a way that might sway anyone, always combative. What’s the point? It seems even more dubious than a blog like this one. The one result – that I can come up with – of comment sections during this election year is to reinforce images we’re already getting from the media (mainstream or otherwise), the candidates, and pop culture. If levelheaded comments are rare, original ones are nonexistent.
So they buoy negative campaigning, and little else? Here’s a case of technology letting us down – or (more likely) vice versa.
This post had Andy Rooney written all over it. Bleh. I apologize in advance.