mediajunk

Wordpress 2.5 has just been released. It includes some great new features and, overall, the user experience (already good) has been enhanced.

Some of the improvements include:

• A better visual (WYSIWYG) editor
• Native support for embedded media, such as video clips, and neat buttons on the visual editor to match this
• A more intuitive dashboard layout
• A nifty file uploader that supports multiple files being uploaded at once
• Custom sizes for thumbnails
• EXIF image support (i.e. reads the labels you put on images from your digital camera)
• Easy creation of image galleries
• Search now includes pages as well as posts

Sorry Movable Type, Wordpress has definitely become my favourite CMS.

While I've always been a fan of Movable Type (it powers this blog), I must admit that I've begun to use Wordpress more and more.

In fact, I've decided to create a set of free Wordpress templates. The first one, Sparsely Green, is ready and you can download it from my company website. And here's a demo.

It's a very simple, Web 2.0 style template. It's widget ready. I didn't add a search form, but you can easily add one if you know even a little WP.

You can download, use and even modify under the Creative Commons Sharealike 3.0 licence. Just be sure to retain the link in the footer!

Update: Wordpress 2.5 has just been released. It's a major update. Sparsely Green is compatible with WP2.5.

Last August, I blogged about a book I was reading, called Wake Up: Survive and Prosper in the Coming Economic Turmoil.

While the book was little known, it's authors made some dire predictions that have turned out to be prescient (Wake Up was published in September 2005). For example, they forecast that:

• the housing market in the U.S. and many other Western countries would collapse
• the dollar would begin a slow, inexorable slide that will continue for many years
• a worldwide recession was imminent...
• and that this recession would deepen into a worldwide depression, leading to deflation

Given this gloomy picture, what is a small business owner to do? Well, don't panic. I believe that the web services industry will prosper in the difficult economic times ahead. Of course, companies are going to look to trim fat, and large, over-priced IT consulting projects will fall foul of many corporate and government cost-cutting knifes.

Overall however, I expect use of the web to grow in times of recession.

• Large businesses will spend more on improving their websites, and on online advertising, as the web offers a lower-cost and increasingly effective alternative to traditional media and marketing.
• Small to medium sized businesses will make more services available online, because of the savings this represents.
• More online businesses will emerge, offering cheaper and better services that improve on existing models and offer greater savings to consumers.
• Consumers will spend more time online, in all sorts of activities like looking for work, shopping for best prices, using VOIP services to save on phone bills, etc.

That's not to suggest things will get easier for providers. As the ever-colourful Michael O'Leary might put it, the web services industry is going to become a bloodbath. But web services aren't going away, you know.