amassed lust Blog of Raymond Angel; Startup Enthusiast, CEO

Even though changes are afoot at MOSH mobile I’ve still been slammed with a plethora of things that need done.

We’ve got a new podcast coming soon to Startup Hero that I’m pretty excited about and I hope to be sharing details about in the next several days with everyone.

I might have some news tomorrow in regard to the whole career aspect of my life. I’ll try to let you all know about that as much as I can as soon as I can.

I did get married recently so I’ve been busy entertaining Mrs. Angel and between everything I just haven’t had a lot of free time to myself.

More to come when I get the chance.

I’m back after a bit of downtime due to a database issue. More to come soon.

Let’s talk about cool technologies for a moment. Especially cool blog related technologies seeing as how Andrew just announced his new gig at TechStars.

Intense Debate is a new comment management system for blogs that allows better tracking, increased commenting, a slick interface and more.

I was recently introduced to it by Andrew Hyde and have been considering installing it on my blog for a few days before I decided to just check out the blog and see how hard it was to get going.

I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that I didn’t have to edit any of my Wordpress files, that I didn’t have to do any strange new code setups and that installation was as easy as dropping a single file in to my Wordpress Plugins directory!

Go ahead… make a comment on this post… try out Intense Debate and see if it is for you.

A lot of people have been talking about all of the hype surrounding WordPress 2.5 and how amazing it is going to be with the new design and all of the new features.

A lot of people have also been talking about how much they hate certain aspects of WordPress 2.5

Most of the complaints have been about the WordPress 2.5 ‘Write Post’ page which I will of course speak about later in this post I find that I have far more complaints.

The first one being the new “Widget” section of WordPress 2.5. I have mixed feelings about this section. I find that I myself understand it but when I was showing it to people who are not experienced bloggers they were confused for a good thirty seconds before they understood it.

I know a lot of people who aren’t very computer savvy and yet still blog. The majority of them use TypePad which is a great product if you are just starting but one that isn’t known for a lot of customizable power.

One feature that every person I know that uses TypePad enjoys is the way TypePad handles themes for blogging. It has an easy to use drag-and-drop interface. You want a widget moved up or down on your sidebar? Easy enough… drag it from the bin and move it around on the sidebar until you find the place you want it.

For a long time it was the same thing with WordPress. You could easily drag and drop the items you wanted to and from the sidebar and then up or down.

The new setup is just confusing to those who are just starting.

In the original pre 2.5 setup you would select the items you wanted and drag them to either sidebar 1 or sidebar 2 and sometimes if your design had it even a third or fourth sidebar. This was intuitive.

I always, always, always use people that I know aren’t savvy with technology to test ideas on. I brought in a few of those people such as my mother and some friends to sit down and attempt to use the old WordPress and then the “new” WordPress and then observed as much as I could to make sure I wasn’t just plain crazy on this.

In the first situation I sat my mom down with 2.5 and asked her to move some items around on my sidebar. She was able to determine she wanted the design system and once she understood what the word widget meant that the widget section is the part she wanted.

My mother has used TypePad because I wrote a major book about the platform. Her first attempt was to drag and drop what she wanted to the sidebar. It didn’t work. After about 25 seconds she realized she had to click the Add buton.

Next I told her I wanted the widget to below the comments widget and so she started looking for the ability to do so. Again she wasted about 20 seconds to find that she could drag and drop the items up or down.

She was confused as to why she could drag and drop on one section but not another.

Which basically had proven my initial thoughts that the new design for handling widgets in your theme is a blunder. They don’t stop with that though.

I have a great deal of posts set as drafts at any given time. I often start having thoughts about a blog post but because of the nature of my job will need to stop writing and take care of something. One feature I love is the ability to simply hit Write and then have my drafts appear at the top so I can click them and keep working on them later.

In 2.5 that is no longer possible.

To get to a draft you actually click the drafts link on the dashboard.

This actually makes more sense to have all my drafts show up in one place and will most likely prove to be beneficial to newer bloggers and less tech savvy individuals but it will require an adjustment on my part and I know I’ll get used to the new way in time.
Everyone had issues with the Write Post page. When I read all of the negative blogs I was assuming that they simply didn’t like change and that the new layout couldn’t be that bad.

Again… mixed feelings with this section.

The new design is much more focused on the actual writing process and less so on the meta and additional tasks that goes with writing a blog entry. I assume this is because a lot of users don’t modify WordPress and simply just use it to post quick entries.

For power users such as myself who make sure each post has a tag, often times add custom fields and other various meta information I find the new layout to require more clicks and as such time consuming and awful to an extent.

Honestly though this is another issue that I think given a bit of time will become a non-issue as I slowly adjust my WordPress habits.

A great deal of complaints have also been focused at the navigation and tabs at the top of the admin panel. I personally have no complaints with the new setup. The new tabs are simplified, the process of moving from one task to another seems more logical and the design overall seems easier for a new user to pick up and begin using.

The new color scheme feels a bit like a Six Apart product and I’m not sure I approve of that
The colors are pleasant and easy on the eyes but after a long period of time writing the same post (such as this one) it gets old quickly and doesn’t feel like home as the old scheme did. The good news is that plugins will be able to change the color scheme and I’ve heard rumors that you can revert back to classic in the settings but I’ve yet to see that option if it even really exists.

The new dashboard actually makes a great deal of sense and I haven’t seen or heard many complaints about it as of yet but I’m sure some elitist will have something negative to say.

Overall my first impression of WordPress 2.5 is mixed. I think a fresh new look is required but I’m not sure that the changes are going to make blogging easier for newer users as the design firm behind it claim.

Who knows… maybe I’m an idiot who knows nothing of blogging though.

You might have noticed my lack of entries this month in comparison to the past two months.

I’ve been sorta AFK. I’ve been on the computer but I haven’t had the time to get over here to my own blog and post some of my thoughts and what not on all of the stuff that has been taking place because things at MOSH mobile have been os busy the past two weeks.

I have some blog posts coming up about Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3 beta 4, my experience with Linux thus far, a story about why I HATE my local Walmart, my attendance at a Hillary Clinton rally (who would have thought!!) and much more.

I’ll be changing some stuff around. If you are linking to my blog on your blogroll please be sure your links point to www.amassedlust.com and NOT entertainment.moshmobile.com/rayray

I won’t be using my work servers anymore