I've started working towards this blog upgrade to the latest version of
Serendipity yesterday, and it was decided to go for the latest beta of
Serendipity 1.1 rather than for the 1.0 release. This time around I'm doing the upgrade on my home server as it's getting to be more and more time consuming. I think it will take me two or three days more to complete the works and make the changes live here on the website.
So, with this in mind, I thought I'd mention here just a couple of truly unique features I simply love
Serendipity for:
Central repository for all the plugins and design templates
Installing new plugins in s9y is simply the best and easiest I've seen in any blog engine to the moment. Before showing you the list of all the plugins, a new list of updated versions is downloaded from the repository. When you activate a new plugin or choose a new design template to be used, all the relevant files are automatically downloaded and installed into your blog directories.
Incredibly easy option of moving sidepanel plugins from lelf side to the right
What I mean is that practically every design template has the support for either side of the sidebar placement. You can simply specify where your plugins should appear - to the left or to the right. Other blog engines, like WordPress for instance, are not so elegant in doing this, you're generally required to fix some of your design template files by hand.
Serendipity 1.1 branch is the one where developers have down something incredible - they've finally implemented the Drag & Drop plugin management! So you have a table of all the plugins, which mimics the current plugins placement on your blog pages, and you can use your mouse to change plugins order in a sidepanel or simply move selected plugins to the panel on the other side of a page. If you haven't seen this live yet, I urge you to
download the latest Serendipity build and try it out!