wordpress 2.5

Jeffro2pt0 Now On WP 2.5

Better late than never! I have upgraded the blog from 2.3.3 to 2.5. The upgrade went very smooth with the exception of one plugin, that being the Berri Technorati Incoming Links plugin which modified the admin panel in 2.3. The plugin caused things to break in the new admin panel. After deleting that plugin, everything is back to normal and appears to be functioning just fine. I’m really digging the new look and I can’t wait to get into the back end and widgitize the hell out of my dashboard.

While I have your attention, let’s take a look at last months Poll results. I asked the question, When Would You Upgrade To WordPress 2.5? The results are listed below:

Poll Results For March 2008

Surprisingly, a large number of you chose the option to upgrade as soon as possible. While ASAP might of been too soon, the rest of the majority decided to upgrade at least a week within it’s release.

Now that 2.5 is here and available for the world to digest, this months poll question is: What Do You Think Of WP 2.5? Be sure to leave your mark and vote for one of the options given to you. I’ve noticed that more and more of you are participating in the poll. Thank you very much!

Its Not So Bad

Have you seen the WordPress 2.5 backend lately? Chances are, you have and perhaps the chances are even greater that you didn’t like what you saw. As for myself, I enjoyed the more modern look with the exception of the color scheme used. All of the color shades appear to be a bit too bright for my liking which ends up giving the backend a washed out look to it. But the features and enhancements to the UI such as the tagging and media uploader have impressed me.

The three major complaints that folks seem to be having with the redesign are these: not being able to rearrange the sidebar in the write panel, ungodly amount of scrolling, and the color scheme. The good news is that March isn’t here yet, so perhaps things will change before then. The bad news is, these are all valid complaints. I personally have to admit that the current Write Post panel within 2.3.3 is much easier and nicer to use than the one in 2.5. The ability to bring things up to the top of the sidebar which you use most often, just about eliminates the need for scrolling. If the WordPress devs add this functionality back into 2.5, they will kill two birds with one stone. People will be able to modify their write panel, solving the scrolling issue while this will also help to diminish the waste of white space.

But if 2.5 is released as we currently see it, based on the reactions I’ve read so far, many people will be displeased. In fact, some people are threatening not to upgrade unless a classic admin panel option is installed or a plugin makes the backend look like it does now. I think that is stretching it a bit and all you’re really doing is hurting yourself by not upgrading. But the fact of the matter is, WordPress is Open Source, and that means that a high demand for something, usually encourages developers to churn out a solution.

So what could this mean? Well, if you recall a post that was made on WeblogToolsCollecion.com not too long ago, you’ll see that there are about a dozen or less admin themes available for WordPress. I believe the number of admin themes available is so low because the current WordPress administration area actually fits the bill for so many people that only the ones who truly dislike it, want to change it to something else. However, in WordPress 2.5, we may see a change in the tide. If the dis satisfaction continues or grows once 2.5 is released, we may see admin themes being released as much as we see frontend themes. This means an awesome amount of choices for backend designs might arise out of this issue which I believe isn’t a bad thing.