Well, yeah, I said, “Wow! Finally, that annoying reformating of the post entry is gone!” I’ve had my share of frustrating hours wondering why my posts on some of my hobby sites would gradually lose the manual formatting if I save and then tried to edit the post again. When I first noticed that problem, I thought I might have accidentally removed a line or two on the editor. Good thing version 2.5 got rid of this problem. It might have been a feature, not a bug, but it’s an annoying feature.

The most obvious change on 2.5 is the color change of the admin page. As I continued to add plugins, tried a few themes, and added some posts and of course, modify my selected theme, I started to appreciate the new interface. The new colors don’t affect me at all on the admin page so I won’t comment further on that. The way the tabs were organized actually made sense. The ones that are frequently used (Write, Manager, Design and Comments) were placed on the left side in large bold font. It’s hard to miss them. The less used tabs (Settings, Plugins, Users) are flushed to the right and shown in smaller font. I wouldn’t have thought that there is a need to change the tabs but this is actually a better way then in previous versions because it lets the administrator see the commonly used functions immediately.

The next thing I found different is the settings that you can specify for each post. They are now located below the post editor, which means if I simply want to change post categories, I have to scroll down a bit, the scroll back up again to save the changes. It might be a good idea if another save/publish button is added on the bottom of the Write page.

The visual editor layout seemed to have changed a bit and the ‘Code’ tab is now called ‘HTML’. Then there is the add media options too. Nothing much changed on functionality for the visual and HTML editor.

I stared on the Manage page the first time I used it. I was presented with a list of posts with no ‘View’, ‘Edit’, ‘Delete’ options. It took me a minute or so to realize I have to click the post title in order to edit it. This might perplex users for a while but they should easily realize that the post title is the ‘Edit’ link now. The fields are rearranged such that in order to edit, one doesn’t have to scroll to the right side, which you need to do in previous versions.

Editing a theme is made a bit easier with the display of the filename of the template file in the list of files to edit. Previously, the link can be called Main, but it actually is index.php. Sometimes the exact name is ideal to see so it is a good idea to add the file name in the list of files to edit. Style sheet is also listed as a separate category on the list so now users can easily identify style shees from othe types.

I’m not sure if this is specific to WP 2.5 but you cannot display post comments when you are still in the ‘Home’ mode. I set the number of posts to show on the homepage to 1. The site showed the latest post but not the comments. If I click on the article title, the page is redrawn with the comments displayed. I’m pretty sure its just a template change but right now I can’t display the comments when I am in the home page.

Plug-in and themes seem to work as usual although I saw a link to automatically upgrade a plug-in. I clicked on it and the plug-in was updated. This is another Wow! It cuts the time to upgrade plug-ins from a few minutes to a few seconds.

My new websites all use 2.5 now but my 2.3.3 websites will not be upgraded yet. I’ll let the 2.5 version simmer for some time before I upgrade. But I’ll be on alert for any security issues which I’m sure the WP team will fix when it is reported. This blog is version 2.3.3 but I might upgrade soon. At any rate, my new sites are using 2.5 during installation.

Overall I think Wordpress 2.5 rocks! It will really make blogging more fun and efficient for the blog owner. Let me know what you think.

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