WordPress

If you've ever moved your WordPress site to another location, you'll find that all your images end up broken because they all point to the old domain.

The problem is, all the image paths stored in the database are static, so you've got to update them to the new location.

Usage case: My usage case is that I'm moving an old WordPress site to my local computer to use as a sandbox for theme design. So all the references to myolddomain.com need to be changed to localhost/sandbox (the directory on the server that my WordPress installation is on).

Caveats: What I'm about to show you will not only update the image paths, but it'll also update the internal links on the site. As long as your permalinks setup is the same as before, everything should be fine!

Tools: This procedure can be easily carried out using either PHPMyAdmin if you've got it installed. You can also use a simple MySQL command line prompt if you're familiar with that.

I test out a lot of content management/publishing systems. A lot.

As someone who runs a couple of websites, I make it my business to check out different publishing systems and see how they're cobbled together. Some systems are pretty straightforward to set up and conducive to publishing straight out of the box.

WordPress

WordPress, for example, is a wonderful publishing tool and more flexible than you might give it credit for: photoblogs, text blogs, magazine style sites are all possible. Bolt on BuddyPress and you've got a basic social network with some of the best elements of Twitter and Facebook. Themeing is a snap, and it's notoriously good for SEO benefits. What it lacks out of the box can be filled in by some extremely well-written plugins.

We run Unreality TV and a sister site off WordPress, and have done since 2005. The improvements to the platform since then have been breathtaking, especially the one-click upgrades and the very slick administration pages.

One of my biggest problems with Drupal is that it doesn’t have common solutions for standard problems: Image handling and WYSIWYG editing are just two areas where Drupal fails users.

Newcomers to Drupal will be aware of the hours of research needed to choose an Image management strategy. And for WYSIWYG editors, you have a fairly broad choice: TinyMCE, FCKEditor and many more.

Doesn’t standardisation = better user experience?

One of the main reasons cited for Microsoft gaining dominance of the Office suite world was the consistency of its interface. You could go from Word to Excel to Outlook and have the same menu structure and icon sets. This easy familiarity led to people being able to get productive because they could find their way around the software intuitively.

I installed a dual-boot configuration during a system rebuild recently and stuck the latest and greatest version of Ubuntu 8.10 on a sizeable partition. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll know that I'm constantly questioning whether Ubuntu Linux is a viable Windows replacement.

One of the key things for me in making a transition of this magnitude is finding a desktop blogging client compatible with Linux and it also being as fully featured as Windows Live Writer - my blogging client of choice and perhaps the leading blog client software. The thing is, the latest version of Live Writer Beta has some pretty hot features, including a link gloassary which allows you to autolink to a page previously linked to: you enter the last anchor text as previously and it automatically creates the link for you.

There isn't a single other blog editor that I know of that can replicate that functionality.

I've been weighing up two blogging/CMS platforms recently with a view to launching a new community site. Those platforms are Drupal and WordPress MU.

Drupal is a leading open source content management system. With the aid of some nifty add-on modules, Drupal is capable of becoming just about anything your imagination wants. Blogs, wikis, forums, event calendars and much more.

WordPress MU is the multi-user implementation of WordPress. It powers the hugely popular WordPress.com blogging community and is mostly limited to just blogging. That said, it's a familiar platform for many and otoriously easy to use.

Considering Drupal

One install and common functionality for everyone delivered via add-ons. Site architecture can be determined and configured centrally.

One common theme by default, with the opportunity to add other themes so that users can customise their experience. Doesn't allow for personalisation of their specific blog though.