Shelley says, “It’s odd, but when I first switched from Movable Type to WordPress, I also thought the interface was ‘unpolished’.” This is a common first impression but an uncommon lasting impression. What could be done to make WordPress a little snazzier for first-time users without compromising the speed and elegance long-time users appreciate?

How to ping Ping-o-Matic in Movable Type. Nice looking blog too.

JournURL is auto-pinging the Ping-o-Matic RPC interface by default. Awesome, and should result in much faster service for JournURL users.

“
Even better the upgrade of the site to the new version is now complete. It took all of 30 seconds to do. Only well written software can make things that easy.”

Brad Froehle » Switch to WordPress
“Let me tell you that right now it’s the slickest thing I’ve used.”

Zen, and the Art of Blogging » Upgraded to WordPress 1.2. “That’s right, they’re making it even easier for you to switch from your old blog software to WordPress.”

This review could be in a good magazine it’s so thorough and surprisingly insightful for someone who has only been using WordPress for a bit. Not distributing language files was actually on purpose. Once more translations are published and checked, we’ll include a few of the most popular with the distribution and make the rest available for download. I’m always annoyed when I download a package where the language files are bigger than the app itself, and I’m going to use one.

Favorite PHP Editor, I realized again today that I have Dreamweaver open more than Thunderbird. It works, but it often feels clunky or like I’m fighting the program. I’m going to check out a few of the options from this thread.

Tim Bray on Vonage. I’ve been happy with my Vonage phone, which I’ve had since around December. The only problem is it seems to have to go in front of my router, and the double NAT makes a lot of things tricky. Also my box is really tiny, not sure why he says they have to get smaller.

“In a relatively short space of time, WordPress has evolved into the perfect blogging tool for the experienced web user, and even for the web novice.”

My experiences writing Joel on Software, a post from 2000 when Joel was using Manilla to run his weblog. Replies from Brent Simmons, Wesley Felter, and Dave Winer.

Matthew Thomas » Interface design in WordPress 1.2. If you think the new options are nice, wait to you see some of the other stuff mpt is bugging me to do. 🙂 We’re very lucky to have this guy around. Don’t believe anyone who tells you UI is easy. Matthew spent a lot of time designing everything and it took me an order of magnitude longer than I expected to implement most of it. (The last 10% will take even longer.)

intraordinary » yes, it’s about time. “We’ve added so much stuff, it’s almost like a 2.0 version, except that your 1.0 templates should still work.”

Wow, Photo Matt and WordPress are in the PubSub 100. How they work.

Good Blimey! WordPress 1.2 Final Released.
“I’ve just now updated Good Blimey to the final version, and it was easy and quick. The past few days I’ve been messing around in WordPress has left me nothing but impressed and sad that I didn’t install it earlier.”

I almost forgot that Neowin uses WordPress for its events blog too. I count 36 authors on that blog, which fits perfectly in our licensing scheme. Hat tip: Sushubh.

Neowin.net -> Comparative: WordPress versus Movable Type. Fair and balanced, and it made the front page of Neowin.

“I just upgraded this site and it took me about 2 minutes!”

WordPress Template Tags, just a taste of some of the new documentation. Kudos to Anne van Kesteren for his hard work on this one.

Hixie’s Natural Log: Web Applications and Compound Documents, IMHO. Like Hixie ever has a humble opinion. 😉