{"id":20,"date":"2004-05-14T07:50:15","date_gmt":"2004-05-14T14:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/index.php\/archives\/2004\/05\/14\/what-wordpress-does-right\/"},"modified":"2010-02-17T11:03:30","modified_gmt":"2010-02-17T18:03:30","slug":"what-wordpress-does-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2004\/05\/what-wordpress-does-right\/","title":{"rendered":"What WordPress Does Right"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s been a flurry of interest in Word\u00adPress<\/a> ever since it was announced that Mov\u00adab\u00adle\u00adType<\/a> will be mov\u00ading to a fee-based mod\u00adel. There already was a sub\u00adstan\u00adtial amount of interest in Word\u00adPress. That\u2019s because the people run\u00adning it (mostly, from what I can see, Matt Mul\u00adlen\u00adweg<\/a>, and there\u2019s a longer list at About Word\u00adPress<\/a>) did quite a few things right. So here\u2019s Lauren\u2019s Product Man\u00adage\u00adment 101, using Word\u00adPress as the example.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to find out what the soft\u00adware does<\/dt>\n
\n

This should be obvi\u00adous, but it isn\u2019t. All pack\u00adages on source\u00adforge, fresh\u00admeat or wherever should include a 2 or 3\u2011sentence descrip\u00adtion of what they do. This isn\u2019t mar\u00adket\u00ading, it\u2019s simply telling people what they need to know. Word\u00adPress spends a page on this inform\u00ada\u00adtion, with screen\u00adshots, which is more than necessary. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just open source soft\u00adware that\u2019s guilty of not say\u00ading what the product does. It\u2019s amaz\u00ading how often mar\u00adket\u00ading depart\u00adments in com\u00admer\u00adcial soft\u00adware com\u00adpan\u00adies try to make the soft\u00adware engin\u00adeers cre\u00adate a product they can mar\u00adket, instead of mar\u00adket\u00ading the product the soft\u00adware engin\u00adeers created.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s an install\u00ada\u00adtion pro\u00adgram, repeat what the product does in the splash screen. My IBM<\/span> laptop came with CDs that I assumed were use\u00adful, but there was no doc\u00adu\u00adment\u00ada\u00adtion, the install pro\u00adgrams did\u00adn\u2019t say what was actu\u00adally on the CD<\/span>, and to make it all worse they could\u00adn\u2019t all be installed at once without want\u00ading to unin\u00adstall each oth\u00ader. All<\/em> install\u00ada\u00adtion pro\u00adgrams should say what they are actu\u00adally installing and how much room it might take.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n

It does what it claims to<\/dt>\n
Anoth\u00ader one of these \u201cshould be obvi\u00adous\u201d pieces. Don\u2019t release overly buggy soft\u00adware. People will nev\u00ader try it again. If you want to get feed\u00adback on a design, use screen\u00adshots. Make it clear which are the nightly builds for the brave and which the stable releases. Word\u00adPress does this right.<\/dd>\n
It looks like people still work on it<\/dt>\n
One of the reas\u00adons I did\u00adn\u2019t stick with Grey\u00admat\u00adter was because it isn\u2019t really being main\u00adtained, and I wanted a blog\u00adging sys\u00adtem that is. If your pro\u00adject has\u00adn\u2019t been updated recently because you\u2019re work\u00ading on a big new ver\u00adsion, say so some\u00adwhere. Again, Word\u00adPress does this right.<\/dd>\n
There\u2019s some hope of get\u00adting help with problems<\/dt>\n
Help with prob\u00adlems can range from reas\u00adon\u00adable install doc\u00adu\u00adment\u00ada\u00adtion to sup\u00adport for\u00adums. The install doc\u00adu\u00adment\u00ada\u00adtion does\u00adn\u2019t need to be over the top, but it should be cur\u00adrent. If some\u00adthing is broken in a par\u00adtic\u00adu\u00adlar ver\u00adsion, say which ver\u00adsion it is broken in. If some part of the instruc\u00adtions is only for older ver\u00adsions, say so. I know keep\u00ading doc\u00adu\u00adment\u00ada\u00adtion up to date is not as much fun as cod\u00ading, but if you want people to use what you\u2019ve done, they have to be able to install it! Sup\u00adport for\u00adums also help and Word\u00adPress does an excel\u00adlent job here.<\/dd>\n
\n

Four basic rules. Word\u00adPress gets them right. Oth\u00ader products do too, even when they don\u2019t have the same amount of sup\u00adport from a user com\u00admunity. Call it Product Man\u00adage\u00adment 101.<\/p>\n<\/dl>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s been a flurry of interest in Word\u00adPress<\/a> ever since it was announced that Mov\u00adab\u00adle\u00adType<\/a> will be mov\u00ading to a fee-based mod\u00adel. There already was a sub\u00adstan\u00adtial amount of interest in Word\u00adPress. That\u2019s because the people run\u00adning it (mostly, from what I can see, Matt Mul\u00adlen\u00adweg<\/a>, and there\u2019s a longer list at About Word\u00adPress<\/a>) did quite a few things right. So here\u2019s Lauren\u2019s Product Man\u00adage\u00adment 101, using Word\u00adPress as the example.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","category-wp-mechanics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":900,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}