WordPress 2.5 is terrific

WordPress is one of the most-used blog script systems in the English-speaking world. A new version, 2.5, has just been released. You can get a copy to install on your own server at www.wordpress.org. A companion site, www.wordpress.com, based on the same technology, is a free blog host service not unlike Blogger.

I've messed around with earlier versions of WordPress during the last year, and like it. It has proven stable, it has a large number of available plug-ins, and there are hundreds of templates for it, some of them very nice. This new version of the script makes WordPress even better.

The administrative interface is clean and makes sense. It runs fast on both the admin and the public sides. You can modify the template files on the fly via the admin control panel. Swapping in a different template takes just seconds.

Wordpress requires PHP and MySQL. Installation is a snap. As with most MySQL scripts, you need to use PHPMyAdmin or some other method to create a MySQL database before you run the Wordpress installer. From the time I downloaded the version 2.5 installer to typing my first post spanned less than 15 minutes, including the entire installation process and trying three different templates.

Though WordPress was designed a blog engine, it works fine as a CMS, too. You can create and edit static pages, just like in any CMS. There's a plug-in available that forces a static page to appear as the home page, so you can relegate the core blog to a secondary position. Other plug ins mold WordPress into the CMS function even further; there's even a self-contained package of several plug ins that purports to make WordPress into a CMS.

I give a thumbs up to WordPress 2.5.