I’ve been following the travails of some blogfreaks who have piled into WordPress 2.1 while it’s still wet behind the ears. Not a pretty sight (or “site” — either will do).

I’ve also read a few posts on what it contains. Very impressive. But one “improvement” caught my sparrowhawk eye : changes in the table structure of the database which may cause some favourite features to implode.

Call me old fashioned, but it’s that word “implode” which jumps out at me. I’m an old hand at imploding websites, probably having imploded more than the average online tinkerer. One thing I know about implosions — they are virtually impossible to get out of without starting again at the very beginning.

Imploding 50 WordPress websites is definitely not on my list of priorities.

So the WordPress team, or community, as open-sourcers prefer to call themselves, can keep their implosions to themselves. Thanks, but no thanks, guys.

All is not totally lost, though. One of the WordPresseers, Lorelle VanFossen, has compiled a magnificent article on the trials and tribulations of 2.1. It contains enough hard information and instructions to put me off for several lifetimes.

Update : You thought I was going to chicken out, didn’t you? Well, I’ve just updated our test site to WordPress 2.1 with no problems at all, except that our version of “Subscribe to Comments” doesn’t work. There doesn’t seem to be a problem with the database either, updating from 2.0.5.

I think the problems stated in the articles are for high-tech users who run very sophisticated scripts and plugins. But, for us, no implosions yet, although I can’t get the call to the sidebar to work in the single post template. Any ideas, anyone?

Google PageRank
Jumping quickly back to the Google PR regrade. All of our newer sites now have PR4, and some later ones have regressed to that. The Google dance is still going on, apparently.

However, I’m noticing that many other sites have been pulled back — even The Blog Herald has lost its PR7 and recoils to a 6. There’s clearly something in the new algorithm which penalizes interlinked networks and possibly text link ads too.

As a commercial network, we’ll just have to accept that the Google model index is now downgrading business and blog networks.

You have a choice, it seems : you can have great PR in the poorhouse, or you can earn income with a poor PR.

Take the money and run.