This is the smallest, least important, and lowest traffic website I have published anywhere online. In fact, this site has virtually no value whatsoever except as a vanity project to get my own name Brian Nelson to show up with me as a first page search result, preferably at the top. It was, therefore, a logical choice to test the WordPress 3.0 upgrade on.
Around the web, there are some reports of WordPress 3.0 problems with the upgrade, but most of those appear to have something to do with breaking themes that are not fully WordPress 3.0 compatible. Of course, the finger pointing has started with some developers pointing at WordPress 3.0 as the problem and some WordPress 3.0 supporters pointing at theme developers as the issue. Either way, it’s a bummer to have your blog broken.
A lot of the WordPress 3.0 issues revolve around the Thesis WordPress theme, which is not surprising considering that the entire concept of the Thesis theme is to re-do all of the standard WordPress functions and scripting in order to make it easier and more consistent. I’ve never really liked it, because I already know my way around the standard WordPress install and hiding all the default functions behind hooks and different functions makes it harder, not easier, for me to use.
Of course, if you are not the type of content publisher or professional technology writer that can look at source code and figure out what is going on, then something like Thesis is a good way for you to get going on your WordPress blog without having to learn a lot of programming languages.
On the other hand, WordPress itself is fairly newbie friendly and does not REQUIRE you to do anything with the source code at all, assuming you can find the writing WordPress theme and WordPress plugins to do everything you want them to do. I’ve been working on that myself by looking into the best WordPress themes for writers. With the new upgrade, it looks like I might have to start looking again, although the most important features in a writer’s WordPress theme would be the same.
