WordPress may be easy to use for lots of people. However, i personally see that it should be even easier. Once in a while, as WordPress theme developer for a private university in Jakarta, I have to train University staffs (some of them are middle-aged) of how to update the WordPress-based site. While it’s still relatively easy to teach them how to create a new post on the WordPress based site, there’s this one particular concept that often hard time consuming to explain: The concept of front end (the interface that visitor sees) and back end (the interface that administrator sees to update the content)*.

Even though most of the time all of the staff is finally able to understand the concept of front end and back end after some learning curve, it is confusing at first, tho. I personally believe that UI should be dead easy. Case in points: Facebook. It’s status updates mechanism and commenting is ridiculously dead easy to use. There’s no freakin back-end and front-end concept to be understood:

  1. Tap a navigation
  2. A form appears at that very page, at that very position
  3. Type, then post
  4. BOOM. What you had typed appears

Wouldn’t it super great if WordPress works that way? I’m not saying that this isn’t possible since there’s a function for that™ called wp_insert_post() and P2 theme has used this approach since long time ago. I’m saying this as WordPress UX in general: Enabling user to add / edit content as they see it on the front end of their WordPress based site would make WordPress even easier to use.

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* This very experience helps me sees the importance of Admin Bar: a consistent interface for non WordPress-savvy user to switch from backend to front end.