Correction: In this post I claimed that the new version of Wordpress does not have a rich-text editor. It was pointed out in the comments, however, that there is such an option of a rich-text editor in the new version of Wordpress. I do not feel that this changes the validity of my original point. See My Comment below.

Mitch Joel over at Twist Image has this theory about how being online has made us smarter consumers. Well, it looks like Web 2.0 is making us smarter users as well, and Wordpress is doing their part to further that trend. They recently released Ella, Wordpress Version 2.1 which is named for Jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. The changes, for the most part, were pretty cool, even if they did cause some of us a headache--don't worry Vlad, I felt your pain. What was most interesting, however, is how the back-end user interface is now configured.

This was Wordpress before the upgrade. Notice how it featured a rich-text editor. This way, users could basically blog without any knowledge of html.

The latest version, however, doesn't offer so much a WYSIWYG interface. Granted, there are buttons there to do all the work for you, but if you have absolutely no knowledge of HTML, you'll probably have a little bit of trouble using the text-editor for the first week or so. But that's just it: after a week or so, you'll be up to par.

On the one hand, it's as though Wordpress is assuming that bloggers have already upped their standard, basic level of geek knowledge. On the other hand, for those that missed the HTML bus, wordpress has set things up in a way they'll be able to catch up to it pretty quick.

All in all, I've found the latest version much more superior to the previous one. Now that it enables you to upload image files directly to your server, I'd even say that it is superior to any other alternative platform that I've dealt with.

Even though I have some basic geek knowledge such as CSS and HTML, I picked it up using Wordpress. So it would seem that Mitch Joel's assertion that social media is making us more savvy consumers goes well beyond