Actually, it’s just a hate relationship really. I hate the way it works, I hate the scrappy, crappy codebase and most of all I hate myself for not finding something better, or in lieu of that, making something better.

Phew.

WordPress 2.7 is currently in development and the wireframes show some improvements in the admin interface. That’s to be welcomed. However, as an encouragement to take usability further here are a few pointers for other improvements.

1. Generally when I log in its because I want to write. I care little for the Dashboard. Take me straight to the new post editor or at the very least give me the option of configuring the admin so that it does it. A cramped “QuickPress” box isn’t a substitute for the real thing.
2. Stop telling me about how much spam you’ve caught. The purpose of a spam catcher is to make it disappear, not to bother me further with reports on how successful the spam catching is.
3. Matt Mullenweg’s thoughts on his breakfast, USian politics, the Amazon Kindle or indeed WordPress itself form no part of my workflow. If I want to subscribe to any WordPress development blogs I’ll do that in my feed reader. This functionality doesn’t belong in WordPress anywhere.
4. You’ve just bought a brand new Moleskine notebook. Unwrapping it and opening it up, you discover that someone has already scrawled on the first page, “This is an example of a handwritten page in your new Moleskine notebook. You can write pages just like this yourself. Try it!” You then have to rip out the example page to actually get started. WordPress should employ effective blank slate techniques, not stuff the database with example content on a new installation that users have to delete before they can use it. Ditto, bookmarks in the links section.
5. The default theme should be as minimal as possible both to encourage users to switch to something else and also to provide the simplest possible starting point for theme development.
6. Uncategorized isn’t a category, it’s information architecture leftovers. Make the app work with no categories and start like that by default.
7. I’m not your pardner. Please don’t address me with “Howdy”.
8. Is it a blog? Is it a CMS? No, it’s a “state-of-the-art publishing platform“. This means nothing whatsoever. WordPress rapidly needs to work out what it is and who it’s for before it goes even further down the route of being jack of all trades and master of none. If this is the state of the art then the art is in a pretty poor state altogether.

Sometimes this happens through laziness, sometimes with careful thought and intent but mostly through ignorance and fallacy.

So why isn’t everyone serving up full-text feeds? The argument tends to go like this:

We’ve got a great website and we want people that are interested in what we do to visit it. Letting people subscribe to our RSS feed is a good way of generating more traffic as readers will click through to read the full text of articles that interest them.

There are two main problems with this line of thinking:

The assumption that a summary-only feed will generate a lot of click-through traffic is a poor one. Most people are only subscribing to RSS in the first place because it gives them a quicker and easier way to follow lots of sites. Force those people to click through to read the full articles and those people will either rarely bother clicking through or they’ll even just unsubscribe. Sadly, the people that decide website policy are often not heavy RSS users themselves and can’t see things from the perspective of those that are.

The bigger and more fundamental mistake here is to put the requirement that people visit your website above all other considerations. If you’ve got a message to get out there, put as few barriers in the way of potential readers as you can. Getting read is the only thing that matters — how and where shouldn’t be issues.

People visiting your website has its benefits for you. They will get a better “branding” experience. They may be able to find other interesting things your organisation is doing. You will be able to track these visits in your web stats.

But all these considerations are of limited interest and value to the user. They want to read your article right now. Nothing more, nothing less. That’s a good thing, right? So don’t get in their way and let them read it the way they want to. By subscribing to your RSS feed, the user has said, “I don’t want to read this on your website. I want to read it in my RSS reader.” Frustrate that good intention at your peril.

Don’t think of RSS as a teaser for the main event that happens on your website. If what you’re saying has value and importance to your readers, they’ll come back to you in other ways anyway. They’ll recommend you to others. They’ll buy your products and services. They’ll join your organisation. They’ll write about you. Most of all, they’ll feel good that you’ve chosen to put their convenience first. A little thought and generosity goes a long way.

It’s more important that your material gets read than it gets read in the way that you dictate. It’s more important that your material gets read than your ability to track that reading in your web stats — though using sites like FeedBurner you can keep stats on your feed subscribers too. If your logo and palette are more important to your branding than your words and your message, you’ve got a problem that no amount of web visits can solve.

We’re moving towards a world where information is read in a multitude of ways, many of which haven’t been provided by, designed by or even sanctioned by the original publisher. The ability of third parties to find your information, share it, combine it with others’ in mashups, convert it to different formats, translate it and redistribute it hinges on them being able to find useful, comprehensive feeds in the first place.

Other people now have a massive ability to add value to the information you produce by transforming and recontextualising it, either just for themselves or for a wider audience. Serving full-text feeds from your website is one way your organisation can be a part of that. If you choose to ignore this, you’ll be at a disadvantage to those that don’t.

• File attachments (eg. images) can now be imported directly (#5466). Just tick the box at the bottom of the import form once your WXR file has been uploaded and all the files from your old blog will be copied to your new server. This is particularly useful when moving blogs from WordPress.com to a stand-alone WP setup.
• Tags are now correctly imported as named tags rather than numbers (#5330).
• Some strange bugs which caused WXR import to crash now seem to be fixed.

In short, moving your WordPress data from one installation to another has just got a whole lot easier and more reliable.

You’ll still need to import your blogroll links as these aren’t part of the WXR file. You can grab these directly from http://www.youroldsite.com/wp-links-opml.php if the old site’s still live.