WordPress 2.5
March 31st, 2008
I just updated all of my blogs to WordPress 2.5 today, and I must say that I am very impressed with the new functionality and the “backstage controls’” new look.
WordPress 2.5, much like Renoise 1.9, does not look or act like merely an incremental upgrade. The administrative functions have a whole new theme and have been completely redesigned and reordered. I’ve already come across several examples of people online bitching that the WordPress developers moved too many things around and made it difficult for some users to find certain functions…but I completely familiarized with the new Dashboard layout in less than two minutes. I find the new interface remarkably intuitive, more powerful, and elegant.
Upgrading was simple enough, if a bit time-consuming (removing files and uploading new versions took about ten minutes per blog), but I’ve dealt with worse. A number of plugins had to be updated in order to ensure that they work the same with the new version of WordPress, but awesomely enough, WordPress now has built-in plugin upgrading: just click “Install new version” and BING! WP downloads and installs the revised plugin entirely on its own. Once the plugins were updated, however, they all worked just as well as they did in previous versions.
All in all, WordPress 2.5 is a much more significant upgrade than its .5 version number would indicate. Much of the processes remain the same, but so much new functionality and design options have been added that it feels as though I’m writing this on WordPress 3.0.
Unlike the many smaller past incremental upgrades (which were released primarily to fix security problems in WordPress’ PHP coding), 2.5 really is an upgrade: a fresh new Testarossa with a familiar, but supercharged, engine underneath the hood. And, as always, it’s a free sports car that costs less than pennies a day to fuel. Your mileage may vary, but so far I’ve been speeding along very happily here.
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