Although I (as a plugin & theme developer) absolutely love widgets and the simplicity they bring, the overall feel of how WordPress UI and core features are decided still seams too hidden and unclear.

Everyone knows about the user testing, but the results have not been made public. If the decisions are based on these results (plus their own experience and knowledge) then publishing them shouldn’t be a problem. One might ask if they are of any benefit to developers and users. I think they are.

My understanding is that wp.org & wp.com indeed have two very different set of users and targeting them both is a very challenging task.

One solution would be to make several of the noob features available as plugins that are installed by default for wp.com users. This would be something along the lines of what Alister said and wouldn’t require any extra options in the settings page (for which the core developers are very opposed to).

Obviously most people won’t start out on their own server or coding plugins, but the real learning curve for me has been the writing, which I am slowly getting better at.

I’m confident that I’ll be a lifelong WordPress user, I’ve very impressed with the developers work and surprised at how easy it is to customize the living daylights out of WP.. and still upgrade in under a minute!

I have to learn and explore new software all the time for my job, which is how I got started, and IMHO, nothing can touch WordPress.. Its open source software with a thriving community of developers.. if you were to leave now you’d hate yourself in a couple years.

As I see it WordPress.com is for the noob blogger, mostly, who wants to get some sort of social media buzz thru the centralization of the WordPress.com portal (if he/she even knows about that), but who mainly just wants a quick and easy way to blog.

I would be keen to know how many people on WordPress.com are going for the extra $$ options of domain name, custom CSS, etc… my guess is that the vast majority do not… they’re noobs, or they’re content.

WordPress.org, on the other hard… that’s where a fair degree of technical acumen is assumed, at least compared to the WordPress.com platform, and as such these people, as per Andrew’s comments, don’t want to be treated as sucklings.

I would like to think that the happy middle-ground is a WordPress.org codebase that can switch between non-tech and tech modes. Essentially, what’s done with the WYSIWYG/HTML editor modes extended to the whole system.

I understand Andrew’s point, I think… that there is a leaning towards bloating the codebase with more and more featured designed to hide anything technical from the user, and yet allow them to do powerful stuff.

I have no problem with that, except that I want to be able to turn all the window-dressing off, if I want to.

Does that make sense?

My father who is 60, is very satisfied with the new Wpress, for him, how just want to blog, it is very easy, It’s true that Widgets and stuff make it easier to add modification to you site, but not flexible enough if you want to reach an other level of modification…

I myself created some plugins/themes for wordpress and each time i have to modify many lines of code and databse requests to suit the new WordPress versions…which come very fast…

My only problem with the actual UI is that it is being changed so soon after the last change.

When I speak about the UI doing things what I mean is that UI is more and more being written for tweakers who are unable, or unwilling, to learn how to tweak things.

WIdgets are a case in point. While they do add some interesting possibilities they also mean that tweakers never have to leran how to paste template tags into their sidebar. This was a great way to lean as it was quick and simple to do and reduced people’s fear of the underlying code, whether it be PHP, HTML, or CSS.

This isn’t a bad thing, but producing features that allow the users to be less able in turn means attracting less able users, which means you need to do more work to support and develop for those users. This inevitably means the UI gets more features, gets more complex, and ends up being less flexible for the users that find it just as easy to throw a few lines of HTML into a sidebar template as it is to create a text widget containing that same HTML.

I think there are two groups of WordPress users and they are found on WordPress.com and the full version. They are the tweakers and the bloggers. While some tweakers are bloggers, their passion lies in pushing WordPress and stretching it. I love that. I worship them. They are the ones who make WordPress become the powerful program it is.

On WordPress.com, these are the people who get the Sandbox Theme and start messing with their designs. They are the ones who keep adding all kinds of goodies in the sidebar Widgets, figuring out how to get things in there that most think can’t be done. It’s a full time job for Automattic’s staff to keep them under control so they don’t break the whole network.

However, the rest of the world just wants to blog. They want to blog easily, add pictures of their children, dogs, cats, and vacations. They want to incorporate video and audio without learning code. They want to get attention and give attention through comments. They want simple and clean for an interface, and the ability to clutter up their blog faces to the world. These people are using all the versions of WordPress.

The interface has to change, with the times and technology as well as the increase in non-technical users. Change is hard for us older folks, used to the way things were, but its necessary.

Is it enough to push people away from WordPress? For some, yes, because any change is drastic, so instead of embracing the change, they pull out an ultimatum and embrace something totally new. That’s serious change, but they don’t see it that way.

For others, the changes WordPress is making is slow, too slow, which satisfies those who like things in small doses and frustrates others. Can’t make everyone happy.

Did you see the incredible testing they’ve done as part of the development of the interface? It’s amazing. Check out the videos from WordCamp SF. The development isn’t based upon whims and whine but thorough scientific research. It’s fascinating.

The moment you post something, it is aggregated instantly on special pages.

Bighow has social networking features, too.

Bighow is a completely original way of publishing online. We are testing it now.

Did I forget to mention that Bighow is free?

Your suggestions are always welcome.

Obviously nothing like that exists…