Project Petaling Street Blog

Now, a little sneakpeak about what wordpress.com can do.

The wordpress.com site is run by the amazing WordPress MU designed to be run on a single site with multiple users blogging on their own individual site. While it can be used to set up multiple blogs on an individual’s site, it is really designed for the corporate company or host server to manage hundreds, even thousands of WordPress sites. It is powered by WordPress 1.6 alpha, which means it is still under development.

With wordpress.com you can set up a working blog within seconds. No more dealing with setting up the database and running install - all that work is done for you. You just sign in with your user name and password.

To set it up, go into Users and Options and set up your user profile with the Blog site name and your author and contact information. Then switch easily to the Presentation panel to choose from the various Themes. Then click WRITE and write your first post wordpress 1.6 upload paneland you are now officially a blogger.

You can write about anything you want, though some people are choosing to write about WordPress, since it is in the URL, but you can write about any topic.

You can upload images, though you are limited, right now, to a total of 15 megabytes. That’s plenty for thumbnails and low resolution images to get you started. When you upload the image, you get a choice to resize the saved image as it is or with two different “thumbnail” sizes or a custom size. When you upload the file, the link to the file is provided to copy and paste into your post.

WordPress 1.6 manage panel You can easily set up categories and post now or set the posts to publish in the future, just as you can with the traditional WordPress. In fact, a lot of what you can do is similar to what you can do with WordPress 1.5, just with a slightly different looking interface, but nothing that is dramatically different. For the most part, WordPress users are going to really love the new interface and adapt quite easily. It’s cleaner and, in many ways, easier to use.

WordPress 1.6 WYSIWYG write post dynamic editor The new WYSIWYG HTML editor is available which basically allows you to see a semi-formatted view of what you are writing. You can see the font styles and the images, but currently, they reflect a simple HTML layout rather than your Theme. Some Theme CSS styles may be incorporated in the future, I hope.

You can choose from the WYSIWYG Dynamic Editing screen or choose the HTML version which is what WordPress users are more accustomed to. With the Dynamic Editing, you can see the image in the editing window when you add it. You can click on it and move it around or change the properties. When you add the image, you are given the option of adding its positioning on the page, which is a very nice addition. Links look like links and headings look like headings.

The Post Preview is still there and it currently is the same view as the traditional WordPress version, keeping to a simple non-styled layout with the images so you can read through easily to look for grammar and spelling errors.

There are some very sweet new features that will be awesome once they are finalized, and so there is much to look forward to in the new version, but for now, let’s focus on what you can, and can’t, do on wordpress.com.

The focus for WordPress has always been to concentrate the user on the content, not the code underneath, and this is what the new version does. It keeps your eye on the prize, the writing and images, so you can blog to your heart’s content and start putting your new WordPress site to the test.

Many thanks to Lorelle for the insider. Head over to her blog to read more about this exciting venture!