Wordpress 2.5: What You Need To Know
March 20, 2008
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It goes without saying that one of the best blogging tips you’re going to get is to use Wordpress. Back in January, though, they announced that they were going to blow through their usual 120-day cycle and actually skip the release of Wordpress. 2.4, and put out 2.5 on time in March.
Well, according to Aaron Brazell of TechoSailor.com, they’ve now got a Release Candidate out, although the official release date hasn’t yet been announced. But if you use Wordpress.com or have had a look at the demo site, you’ll know what’s upcoming. I’ll try and summarize what Aaron’s posted and include the stuff I find most relevant to myself.
New Admin Interface
This is going to be the most obvious change that you’ll see. The colour scheme has been changed to include lighter blues, greys and and even some orange thrown in there as well. It’s a very “Web 2.0″ experience, and if you don’t mind that, then you might not mind the new interface. If, however, even the term “Web 2.0″ makes you look around for something to bludgeon, then maybe you’ll want to create your own custom look, which you can now do.
Menu Layout
When you log in, you’re liable to say, uh, where’d everything *go*? The main tabs on the dashboard when you log in are now limited to Write, Manage, Design (formerly Presentation) and Comments. Settings, Plug-ins, and Users have been moved to the right hand side of the layout, almost as secondary menus.
Personally, I’d like the ability to move the main tabs around on the dashboard. I never use the Write tab, simply because I do all of my posting from Windows Live Writer. So I’d like to be able to swap Write for Plug-ins, for example. I’m more likely to activate and de-activate plug-ins.
Widgets
Holy crap. I like it. The whole concept of moving the widgets around and laying them out the way you want just got a whole lot better in my opinion. Aaron wasn’t wild about it, saying it feels like more work, but I have to say I really like the changes. It doesn’t feel like a module from 1999 that just got woven in. Much better, guys.
New Visual Editor
Sorry, but like I mentioned above, I don’t deal with the writing process inside Wordpress, so I don’t really have an opinion on this one. Maybe someone else could give it a try in the demo and let us know, eh?
Automatically Upgraded Plug-ins
A nice feature, but a security risk. This would require your plug-ins to be updated from anywhere, automatically. If this doesn’t make you a little nervous, it probably should. You will have the option of disabling this, however, and updating your plug-ins the old fashioned way, too.
Time stamping
Apparently it’s been given a complete re-write, and it’s long past time. The options now are much move like Movable Type (ugh) where you specify where a post is published or not, and you can then modify the time stamp if you wish. It’s something that needs to be seen to really get it.
So that’s what I got from Aaron’s post that meant the most to me. Have a look at the full post, by all means, and see what might be in there for you.
If you’re a bleeding-edger, you can test the latest version by getting it from: http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/trunk but all of the standard disclaimers apply. You’re on your own.
When the release date is announced I’ll be posting about it here on BloggingNotes.
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March 20th, 2008 at 7:30 am
Wordpress 2.5: What You Need To Know…
I almost wondered if Aaron Brazell of Technosailor was going to miss posting on the upcoming changes to the 2.5 release of Wordpress, due out later this month, but he did in fact post about it.
I’ve got my thoughts on the whole thing on BloggingNot…
March 22nd, 2008 at 5:18 am
Thanks for this info. I am still at 2.31! I’d like to see photo handling done better.
March 22nd, 2008 at 7:01 pm
[...] Bloggingnotes.net Wordpress 2.5 What You Need to Know [...]
March 24th, 2008 at 9:39 am
I’m looking forward to the release of 2.5. I think it looks well. I’d use the release candiate that is out at the moment but I will wait for the offical release so that they can work out any bugs that they may find.
March 29th, 2008 at 12:39 am
Wordpress blogs really looks well than others.
I will definitely use this blog host in my next blog site.
Great info.
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March 29th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
It’s been released! I’ll be upgrading, but I’m not really looking forward to it. To quote Wayne’s World, “We don’t like change. We fear it.”
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March 31st, 2008 at 12:03 am
I had been using 2.5 a bit while it was an RC on sites with under 50 posts and it worked out pretty good. However, after installing it on my main blog, I started running into quite a few issues.
Of course, some of those issues were because I was running an older version of WordPress, but there are also some serious image-handling limitations. Since I wasn’t willing to “get used to it” or start using a secondary application to write my posts and upload them, I decided to roll back to the previous version.
The next time I upgrade my primary site, I’ll be sure to do much more testing and vetting
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April 2nd, 2008 at 12:05 am
[...] listed some things about "Wordpress 2.5: What You Need To Know" at BloggingNotes.net. What he didn't know is that the new widget code breaks some of the [...]
April 2nd, 2008 at 7:05 pm
We upgraded everything the other day all the way from 2.1.3 lol! It went very smoothly
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April 4th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
I’ve been dragging my feet about upgrading to 2.5. Thanks for the heads up on the new look and feel of 2.5. I’ll be sure to get the upgrades done within week or two.
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April 8th, 2008 at 6:54 am
@Diane: That’s great to hear. I’m almost done with all of mine, in fact. Just one left to do. Thanks for your comment.
@J.Blu: I have to admit to really liking the new interface. There’s the odd thing that takes a little getting used to but it’s not too bad.