[wp-docs] Preparing for 1.5+

[lorelle at cameraontheroad.com]

After totally messing up a bunch of files in WordPress, AND wanting some 
plugins that are coming out now that say they work "best" in 1.5.1alpha, and 
ignoring all warnings that say "don't play in this sandbox unless you know 
what you are doing", I thought I'd risk it.

My mouth is hanging open from just a couple minutes of use.  WOW.  I adore 
the new plugin color coding to show off activated plugins.  Very slick 
indeed.

Now, thinking WAY ahead of the game, I'd like to start a thread in here, 
with maybe a private user page or something hidden deep in the Codex, that 
lists some of the topics that will need to be covered in the new release, 
whenever the new release comes.  Just thinking ahead.  Here are a few of the 
things I noticed right off that will NEED to be in the Codex and forum 
volunteers will need to be prepared, unless an update comes that "fixes" the 
issues.

* Mention of the new color coding on the Plugins - Honestly - I am so 
thrilled with that feature!

* Upon install, and after running UPGRADE, all plugins are deactivated. 
This has a couple of consequences:

      ** Need to inform people that they should print out the plugins page 
before installing the new version so they can have a list of what they had 
activated or not activated.

     ** Plugins which require tags, like custom posts, meta tags (keywords), 
and other manually inserted tags may choke when the user clicks "you're done 
now visit your site" from the Upgrade page.  The site will load and report 
errors on the first plugin tag it finds that isn't activated.  If this 
continues, maybe the "click here" button needs to go to the Login page with 
a recommendation to turn on any plugins....I'm not the tech, but this might 
have to be addressed in troubleshooting.  I freaked for a moment when the 
page came up with an error in the header and nothing else loaded from that 
point.  But I knew how to track it down.

    ** Writing Options and been improved and the ability to control the size 
of the writing box is brilliant.  I was just going to look up all my admin 
hacks to start enforcing changes when I started writing this email and 
poking around look at changes - this is one big time saver for me!

  ** This might be also with 1.5, but in poking around I just found out that 
ALL of the 500+ articles I imported into WP came in with me as author at 
level 1.  I saw the minus in front and thought, $%&*, they think I'm a minus 
1 user.  How could I have screwed that up.  Since this new "me" is now the 
second user on the site, I searched for over 30 minutes to figure out that 
the minus isn't a condemnation of my user level but a BUTTON.  We need to 
make sure this info on how to change the user level is in the User Level 
page on the Codex, a current feature or one to come, I don't care.  Why 
isn't there some text on under the title on that Panel that says "click the 
+ or - to change user levels."

   ** Theme Editor - I don't remember seeing this before.  Is it new? Got to 
write about it.  Absolutely BRILLIANT.  I gave up trying to use the built in 
editor because I didn't want to write the long URL to get there.  This is 
awesome.

I'm sure I'll find more but anyone who is using the new version, we need to 
start making a list of what needs to go in the codex for it, and catch 
anything missing that should be in for 1.5, too.  New stuff that is old 
stuff looks new when viewed from a different angle.

To the developers - AWESOME award winning improvements so far.

Lorelle VanFossen