A customizable dashboard, multi-file upload, built-in galleries, one-click plugin upgrades, tag management, built-in Gravatars, full text feeds, and faster load times sound interesting? Then WordPress 2.5 might be the release for you. It’s been in the oven for a while, and we’re finally ready to open the doors a bit to give you a taste.

Very excited to see that Zeldman et have given the interface a thorough scrub. I use Ecto for posting, because the WP write screen has always left me wanting, but I do poke around the other tabs fairly often. As for the new features, speed and plugin management is good, the rest I already have as plugins, nice to see some key features baked into the core.

I’ve been blogging since 2002. I started on Movable Type and stayed on the platform when I moved over to Corante, the very first blog network. When I moved back to my own url, I decided to check out WordPress. My blog, although it doesn’t look it, has a lot of plugins and customization, so I go for the self-installable version. At some point managing my blogs in Movable Type was becoming a problem, and I thought that perhaps WordPress would make it easier to admin my blogs.

Guess what, I was wrong. At the time, WordPress had, and still has, just as many issues as Movable Type, which went in the direction of corporate dollars and is now swinging back around to offer an open source version after watching WordPress run away with  the free sector of the blog software market. My two main gripes were that both platforms (and their underlying blogging protocols)  failed to play nicely with desktop blogging clients like Ecto and lacked a serious tag management system. Ultimate Tag Warrior is my weapon of choice; both amazingly powerfull, under-developed and undocumented, a frustrating mix. I remain hopeful that WordPress 2.3 will roll out built-in tagging tools.

Now Movable Type 4 is out, and I stand at a crossroads. WordPress gets under my skin often: IMHO, open source != well written software, frequent feature updates or bug fixes. Which leads me to think out loud, will MT4 be any better than WP 2.2? I’ve set up some very cool blog systems using both platforms. Perhaps it’s time to check out Movable Type again. Reading the MT4 docs, it would appear so.

Especially interesting is the ability to run multiple blogs off of one installation, similar to WordPress MU. My problem with WPMU is that there have always been plugins that I want to use that are not supported.

I will hold off saying more until I’ve had a chance to kick MT4′s tires thoroughly. In the meantime, I just found out that an Alpha of Ecto3 is out in the wild. I can’t wait until it’s stable enough for day-to-day blogging. It makes you a better blogger, guaranteed.

You would probably like the flexible OLED screens. As for the rest, you probably knew about Compete’s new API and most of the other stuff I linked to.

I moved from:
www.example.com/archives/month/day/entryname.php

to:
www.example.com/archives/month/entryname/

The easiest way to do this was with the Apache server mod_rewrite module, which is installed by most web hosts by default. Unfortunately, figuring out the mod_rewrite code to do this in my .htaccess file was tough, the learning curve is incredibly steep. I asked around forums and the WordPress support site.

Here is the code to add to you .htaccess file. You may need to adjust for your specific situation.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteRule ^archives/([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/([0-9]{1,2})/(.*)\.php$ http://example.com/archives/$1/$2/$4 [R,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^archives/.*$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^.+\.php.*$
RewriteRule .* – [L]

Additional mod_rewrite tips and tricks to make sure your killer Page Rank and SEO work doesn’t go down the drain when moving your blog.

Signing in with valid credentials through wp-login.php reloads the same page. Notice the url redirect in the address bar.

It turns out that every time I delete cookies associated with my blog domain in Firefox on my Mac the domain is added to the cookie exception panel, blocking successful access to the WP admin area. Removing my blog domain from the exception panel clears up the problem.

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