I could easily rant for a while here about how much certain elements of WordPress, the software that powers this blog, fall short.

Like how the [!-more-] tag, which is designed to hide some post text until you click on the “more” link to read the whole thing, doesn’t actually reveal the hidden text on the same page. That would be the standard for Movable Type-powered blogs, and therefore has become standard for most blogs. Instead, WP uses the [!-more-] tag to just take you to the permalinked, single-post page. Which is not what I want, and therefore pretty useless.

In other words: WP sucks.

Thankfully, there’s Scriptygoddess’ plugin to make this tag behave the way it should (more or less). Thanks, Jennifer.

Actually, I’m not a huge fan of the “hide/show” post. I think it’s way overused on most blogs. I guess some bloggers feel a need to present all their posts with the smallest wordcount possible, therefore reducing their front pages to a series of teasers. That’s a turnoff to me: I don’t want to clickthru multiple times when my intent is to just browse.

So why did I use it here (not that you can see it on the permalink)? Partly just to try it out. I think it does have utility, like, for instance, if I’m writing about a movie currently in theaters and I’m dropping loads of spoilers. It’s nice to have, but I don’t see using it very often.

In a spasm of cuteness, I’ve named the functional links “Pop it!” (to show the rest of the text) and “Unpop it!” (to hide it). It’s an attempt at a play on the “Population Statistic” title. I may or may not change it (“populate” and “depopulate” suddenly come to mind). Again, I won’t be using this much, so it’s not a high priority.