Be thankful WordPress gets updated

WordPress 1.2

It seems that with every new upgrade of WordPress nowadays, someone is complaining. Usability testing? This is going to confuse all my clients! My plugins will break! What will I do?

I will say that there has been far less complaining in the wait for 2.7 than the last couple of versions — it does have a pretty slick interface built in, doesn’t it?

Let’s take a quick stroll down memory lane.

WordPress version 1.2

I first started tinkering with WordPress during the 1.2 days. I didn’t use it on this site until May 2005 (version 1.5).

Earlier today, I decided to set up a test install of 1.2 just to see how far the platform has come since I first installed it.

I actually screwed up the initial install somehow. It was probably because I had to use this crazy file system. As it turns out, 1.2 is not even in the Subversion repository. I did manage to get it installed though.

If you’ve ever once said that WordPress needs to slow down or not update so often…

WordPress version 1.2 write post screen

Yes, that’s the Write Post screen you’re looking at. Not much to it, but it got the job done as best it could.

Like those beautiful themes we have these days?

Yeah, it was much harder back in the day to dress up your blog. Imagine editing your lonely index.php file to run your blog only to get this:

Default style of WordPress version 1.2 “WordPress 1.2 Default Theme”

OK. So, today’s Default theme isn’t much cooler, but you couldn’t manipulate the look and feel of your blog like you can now.

Still don’t like advancement?

I suppose I could go on listing all the advancements WordPress has made in such a short amount of time and why I love each new version that comes out, but I’d rather not. I have to go play around with WordPress 2.7 Beta a little.

If you can honestly tell me that you’d rather go back to the good ol’ days, then I’ll just have to take your word for it. The only argument I could see you making is one based on simplicity.

It doesn’t take three PhDs and an IQ of 180 to run a WordPress blog these days though, so that argument is trivial.

I tend to like a few bells and whistles with my blogging platform anyway.

The point of this post is not to point fingers at anyone that’s complaining (you know who you are!). It’s just to remind everyone that we should be thankful to be a part of such a wonderful community and using a platform that does get updated regularly.

If you want to learn more about the history of WordPress (the pre-1.2 days), read Evolution of WordPress: B2/Cafelog to WordPress 1.0.