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Well, now that Yahoo is offering automated setup of WordPress blog software, I thought I’d try it out. You can access it on the links bar on the right under “My Blog”. (Original name, huh?) I’ve had a few trials and tribulations! Here is what I’ve discovered after a few days of use…

Installation Issues

• Setup on local OSX servers is indeed a snap, as long as you know how to set up MySQL databases and add users to access those databases.
• Setup on local Windows servers is much more of a challenge. You must install Apache, PHP, and MySQL via various install packages. I found out that WordPress will not work on Windows machines with MySQL 4.1 packages, which is currently the main version being used for the most convenient installers out there. (WordPress is not able to connect to MySQL 4.1.) Update: You can use the latest installs. The fix is to change MySQL to click the “Use old passwords” option. This forces MySQL to use an older encryption method that is compatible with MySQL 4.0 and older clients.) You will need to use a MySQL install of 4.0.X…I ended up using the 4.0.23 installer, which seemed to work fine. You’ll then have to manually set up MySQL as a service so that it will start automatically and you’ll have to know/figure out how to enter MySQL commands via the DOS command window. This is much less of a “newbie” type of install! Access Windows MySQL install and commands docs here, here, here, and here.
• Another Windows WordPress Issue is that Permalinks don’t work. Permalinks in Wordpress are various ways of naming the links to your WordPress posts. The default Permalink format looks something like /blog_post.php?p=123. A clearer, more informative Permalink format would be something like /web_design/2005/05/23/html-tips. Well, with Windows, only the default Permalink setup works.
• Initially, Permalinks would not work on Yahoo. I tried re–installing, turning them off and on, and suddenly they worked. Go figure!
• I also had problems getting the RSS feeds to work correctly on Yahoo. They kept being generated somehow with a blank line as the first line. You XML experts out there know that having a blank first line invalidates your feed! Somehow, while trying to solve the Permalinks problem, the RSS feed “healed itself!” No more blank first lines! Valid XML RSS feed! Again, go figure! But at least I now have a WordPress installation configured relatively closely to what I want.

WordPress Issues

• WordPress does not like to display code snippets or examples! This drove me crazy for a few hours! Apparently, WordPress does a lot of “massaging” of your HTML when you post it into it’s databases. Your code snippets end up going out the window! There are various plug–ins available to supposedly handle this, but they were haphazard at fixing this problem, at best. Once I did fix the code so that it displayed adequately, re–editing the post would totally blow it away again! My workaround for this is to go directly into the database, via PHPmyAdmin, and update it with my post. (Fortunately, I like to compose my posts using a text editor. This allows me to make it nice and “purty” before I actually upload it, or in this case, have WordPress muck with it!) But you shouldn’t have to do this!
• WordPress also mucks around with other HTML tags. In particular, WordPress had a hard time with anchor link tags. It would repeat the anchor tags multiple times, wrapping them around various pieces of text. This was another pain the @$$!
• I’ve also had WordPress randomly generate some extraneous HTML tags on it’s own when displaying a post. Mind you, these tags were not actually in the post! They just display with it, which causes validation errors in the HTML! I don’t know about you, but I work hard to make sure my (X)HTML is completely valid. WordPress, don’t muck with my code!!!

Yahoo Issues

• At times, Yahoo has been extremely slow when posting. This is especially true when you call up the raw HTML entry panel. What takes so friggin’ long to pull this simple panel up?!

Cool Stuff

• WordPress has a ton of features. Automatic pinging of various weblog servers, easy comments entry, management, and spam prevention, importing of posts via RSS feeds, posting via e–mail, easy addition and management of users, etc. Very cool!
• Strong user community. There are a ton of people out there who use WordPress, write posts about it, write code, themes, and plug–ins for it, etc. So you are not alone!
• Extensible and modifiable architecture. You have access to all of the code, so if you know PHP and have a lot of patience, you can modify it to your heart’s content! This is not for the faint of heart, though!

Interim Conclusions

So far, it has been a mixed bag for me. I hate, repeat hate, that WordPress messes with your HTML so much. Why take perfectly valid HTML and muck with it so much? WordPress, please add an option to take a post verbatim and unchanged… Right now, I have loaded all of my old posts into a vanilla–themed WordPress install and plan to “double–post” for awhile. When I get around to re–styling the CSS and figuring out how to do some mods to WordPress, we’ll see where this goes. Right now, I’m glad to have my regular website in addition to WordPress. At least my website does exactly what I want it to!

Filed by matteo at 4:03 pm under Web Design, Software/Development, How-To