I am really enjoying the wordpress service. I have loved wordpress since the beginning and it is joy to deal with. I have but two gripes which are really starting to get on my nerves. The first is with the hosted wordpress version that is on wordpress.com. I love the WYSIWYG editor, and many of the other AJAXy features that make it great. It is really bugging me that you can’t edit your templates. I mean in the self-hosted version of wordpress you can, and it is quite easy. Why have they stripped some of the features off of the self-hosted version of wordpress? I just don’t understand it.
As long as you do some general cross-site scripting checks, what is the big risk? It is definatly not a problem of the fact that they haven’t created it yet because it is in the self-hosted version. The FAQ reply to this says that they haven’t found an easy way for you to edit the CSS and HTML. I am fine with that, but this is a beta version, put something out there that allows us people who can edit the css or html to do so, and when you find a better, sleeker way than roll that out and make it so that it is easier for the less-knowledgable. My last pet peeve about this is why did Robert Scoble get to edit his template? Yes, yes I realize that he get thousands of hits a day, but why is he the only person to edit their template. I would love to be able to edit my template.
Now, the second part of this rant is that since this template flaw annoyed me so much I was thinking of going back to my self-hosted wordpress, but than I realized it didn’t have the feature that I wanted the most, WYSIWYG editing. It is in the hosted version of wordpress, but not the self-hosted version. Why is that? I would love to switch over to self-hosted but I really love this WYSIWYG editor. In version 1.5.3 of wordpress, why can’t they add this editor? I have found no bugs, and find a delight to use.
So WordPress guys, what is your answe r. I love both your self-hosted and hosted products, except for those little things. Why can’t you fix them, I would really like to know. My email is at admin@rootsmart.com if you are wondering and I am waiting for an answer.
Yulia said
It’s quite simple really. WordPress themes use raw PHP rather than the template tags used by other tools like Blogger and MT, and it simply isn’t safe to give unlimited and possibly inexperienced users the power to write and execute PHP on a free hosted service like this. So HTML customisation is out, unless some kind of templating engine replaces the raw PHP and I know the developers have never been keen on that idea.
Editing CSS does not have the same security issues involved, however discouraging people from personalising their blogs has the advantage of strengthening the wordpress brand because all WP.com blogs are instantly recognisable as such.
I guess in answer to your second problem, you could always try using the latest development version of WP on your self-hosted blog, very similar to wordpress.com but you have to be aware that it is not supported and could break at any time.
JT said
I thought you were liking Blogger? Now the switch, what is next for your blog as well as the podcast?