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I have been using WordPress since version 1.5 and instantly found it easy to use. Since then each upgrade has been met with much anticipation. Finally 2.5 is here and with an abundance of new features promised it is time to download and install…

…six minutes fourteen seconds later…

Just finished upgrading from WordPress 2.3 to 2.5 RC1. As easy and painless as any other upgrade in the past. As soon as the upgrade has finished previous users of WordPress will notice a difference when logging in. Nothing spectacular just a hint of the what lies beyond the login page.

The Dashboard has been overhauled and the primary navigation has been reorganised as shown below (click on the image to enlarge):

Below the main navigation is an area that provides a nice summary of your blog (number of posts, pages and drafts) and two links for adding a new page or post are prominently displayed. Beneath that are a couple of areas that show Recent Comments and Incoming Links and underneath that are displayed three WordPress related feeds. At the very bottom of the Dashboard it says, “you are using a development version (2.5-RC1). Cool!”

Even as I type this I am noticing new features.

For instance; I wrote the title and soon after I tabbed to the main post content area the permalink to the article was displayed below the title. Not only that but the title that makes up part of the permalink’s URL is editable - very neat and useful.

I’ve not been on every admin page yet but it looks like most have had their layout altered. The ‘Write Post’ page is a lot neater in my opinion with less to the right but this means that the ‘Categories’ are below the ‘Tags’. I found it handy to have the Categories within a slight mouse move to the right, rather than having to scroll down. Categories are surely more important than Tags.

Anyone who has used WordPress before version 2.5 will notice huge differences in the overall layout and colour scheme. The colour palette is subtle with cool pale blues and pale greys. It is very nice but too subtle on pages like the ‘Plugins’ page where more contrast between active and non-active plugins would be preferable.

The old colours (below left) provided a clearer indication of which plugins had been activated when compared to the new colours (below right).

The image upload has been redesigned. There are four small icons for adding images, movies, sound and other media. At last multi file uploads are possible, this should save bloggers a lot of time if images are a often used on their blogs.

There are a number of features that I have to investigate. There seems to be some sort of gallery feature built into WordPress without the need of plugins. This could prove to be a very useful feature for WordPress users.

Summary

Overall WordPress 2.5 is a great improvement on what was already a fantastic blogging tool. The new layout is neat and less cluttered.

Despite the redesign familiarity is not lost, which is good news for long term users. The whole admin area is definitely faster, not sure about the resulting website up front though.

It looks like WordPress is here to stay and will continue to improve with each new release.

Most of the features that I’ve discussed are illustrated in the following screenshot:

For more information about the latest release read 2.5 Sneak Peak on the WordPress website.