Okay, one thing that I’m both enjoying immensely and mildly annoyed by with WordPress is its dependence on Widgets.<\/p>\n
Widgets are prefab code blocks, often using a plug-in, that can be easily inserted in the sidebar(s) of a widget-aware WP theme. They make it wildly easy to … well, do all the crufty bits over in my current sidebar. If you’re looking to have something in your sidebar, there’s probably a widgetized plug-in that will do it for you, or that can be adopted for it. And if you have a provider that offers up code for your sidebar, there are generic widgets you can put in there to contain said code. And the WP interface lets you reorder the widgets at will. It’s very, very cool.<\/p>\n
It’s also mildly annoying because, until you’re ready to write your PHP, you’re more or less limited to what’s out there to do. And if you want to do mild tweaks to a widget — well, again, unless you’re going to go root around in the PHP, you’re kind of hosed.<\/p>\n
I did extensive modifications to my old sidebar, which had the advantage of making it almost exactly what I wanted, but the disadvantage of making it high maintenance and brittle. Widgets remove some of the flexibility, but more than make up for it in ease of use. <\/p>\n
Even better, WP 2.7 comes, out of the box, with a good array of widgets to use — most of the bare-bones but functional, such that there are plenty of replacements for all of them out in the wild, but there’s no key functionality missing. And by widgetizing so much of this stuff, it makes tailoring your blog to be what you want a lot easier.<\/p>\n
I’m aware that MT has been getting more of that sort of thing — but I was never in a position to take advantage of it, due to the stuff I’d accumulated in my old installation. My sense is still that their solution isn’t nearly as robust (yet) as what WP provides. Pretty cool for relative neophytes, but with plenty of potential (including of rolling your own) for eventual experts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"