Last week I saw some screenshots previewing the new WordPress 2.5 admin interface. As soon as I saw the screenshots, I knew I was going to like using the interface. The design and information architecture was done by the very talented Happy Cog people, so it is not surprising to know that the interface works well, is intuitive to use, looks fantastic and makes it fun to manage your blog.
What did surprise me, however, is how easy it was upgrade to the new version. Upon seeing the screenshots, I was immediately excited about upgrading, but figured the new version wouldn't be released for awhile. Much to my pleasant surprise, it was released over the weekend (I'm guessing). However, I remembered how installation-challenged I am when it comes to configuring software. These developer people make it sound so easy, but if you're a developer, it is easy. But not to me - usually, that is.
I know Dreamhost gets its fair share of criticism, but personally I have never had anything but a good experience with them. I really love their one-click installs - it made it really easy for someone like me to set up and configure my blog, databases, etc. I was hoping that they also had something like "one-click upgrades" but thought that would be too good to be true.
As it turns out, they do have a one-click upgrade feature for certain software. Fortunately for me, WordPress was one of the available upgrades. Maybe I'm easy to impress, but I was surprised it was as easy as clicking and following a couple of links. They even created a backup file of my blog directory for me. Much different than it was back in the old days when I set up my first blog (2003). To me that really demonstrates the power of what must be a very technically elegant codebase.
The only snag I had was that for some reason the new software version did not like the way I was calling include files in PHP. I was using <?php get_filename(); ?> to call includes. All I had to do was change that to <?php include "filename.php"; ?> and it everything worked like a charm.
The best thing about the whole process? It took less than 10 minutes, including the time it took to modify the PHP include calls.
Thank you, Dreamhost and THANK YOU, WordPress! Kudos to Jason, Jeffrey and Liz at Happy Cog, as well.