I’m in The City, attending the WordPress 1.5 install event, hosted by the lead developer, Matt. I first started using WP at version 1.2, having been sold on it as soon as I discovered its devotion to Web standards and typography.

From the beginning, it was clear to me that WP was the right tool for this site, but it wasn’t until I started using the 1.5 beta that I really felt sure this was going to be the right long-term solution. Tonight, with the official release of 1.5, is the right time to say a little something about the software.

If you’re handy with XHTML, CSS, and understand PHP even just a little bit, WordPress becomes as customizable and powerful as AutoCAD is once you understand menu scripts, and attribute tags, and know a little bit of AutoLISP.

If you’re blogging with TypePad, MovableType, Blogger, or anything else, WP 1.5 is something you just have to try. Aside from the philosophical difference in WP from other blogging systems—of everything being served dynamically from a database, so that any change is instantly propagated—the new features make WP far easier to use, increase its flexibility, and may change the way you organize your site:

Pages

WP can now manage just about every item on your site, if you wish. Posts are posts—by design meant to be fleeting glimpses that soon get relegated to an archive—but pages are meant to last, with much simpler Web addresses (think CADJournal.com/About, or CADJournal.com/Advertising) that will last forever. They’ll behave just like static pages, but will benefit from all the template and style changes made to the site design, instantly, just like everything else about WP.

Modular Templates

Instead of having monolithic templates for each type of posting that must have everything, including the XHTML wrapper, 1.5 now has modular templates, where the header, footer, sidebar, and main content are separate files, so that a change to the sidebar affects all pages on the site, without having to be copied from the main posting template to the archive template to the individual entry template.

Dashboard

The dashboard always shows you your site’s stats—the most recent post titles, the latest incoming links (trackbacks), and number of posts—along with the latest news from WordPress (except for tonight, when Matt is busy helping people upgrade (a 5-minute process) and and tweak their sites—the official announcement should come tomorrow).

Blogs within Blogs

For me, this is a big thing. You can create additional WP loops that pull content from the database in a different manner than the main blog on any page. I’ll be using this to post the latest news and new product announcements on every page without disrupting the flow of my main blog that covers my trials and travails of using all these cool CAD tools, but with the power of the filters, the possibilities are endless.

It’s obvious by now that blogging has made the Web hip—but WordPress is also making it fun again.