Are You Ready For WordPress 2.5?

Posted on March 30, 2008
Filed Under Announcements, Articles, Blog Promotion, Software, Technology and Web 2.0, Web Site ToolBox

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So I wake up today and change all of my clocks to one hour forward for the official start of spring time here in London, UK. After switching on my PC and logging in to my WordPress blog I discover the inevitable upgrade for WordPress 2.5 is ready. Looks like the Beta testers have sorted through most bugs (hopefully).

So What’s New?

Well when you head off to WordPress you can see the revamped design. A much welcomed sleeker design by Matt Thomas that uses the entire width of the browser with less of those wasteful white spaces. Take a look at the “sneak peak” to see diagrams of the new Dashboard which has more significance in highlighting important news and is now “widget” based. See more details and examples in diagrams within the development area. I must admit I tend to ignore the dashboard and go straight to the “Write” section and the occasional check of the “Plugins” area for notifications of the any new versions I need to download and install. You must watch the video from Matthew Mullenweg as he goes inside his own WordPress admin interface to show you some of the functionalities of WordPress 2.5.

Top Tip

If you have a test server or domain where you can install WP 2.5 you can perform tests for plugin compatibility and decide whether you like the new features over your current installation. This is a good practical tip to installation success before jumping head first into upgrading all current blogs.

I always use a test domain first as I am very familiar with the hours lost tweaking and battling with little errors, usually related to my customized header file. However it is more than likely that I will wait for feedback from other WordPress users before I commit to the upgrade. Particularly any concerns with plugin compatibility issues.

From what I have read about WordPress 2.5 so far I particularly like the “Few click plugin updates” as described below:

“Few-click plugin upgrades — if the plugins you use are part of the plugin directory since 2.3 we’ve told you when they have an update available. Now we take that to the next logical step — downloading and installing the upgrade for you. This is dependent a little bit on your host set-up, and it may ask you for your FTP password much like OS X or Windows will ask you for a password, but it works well on majority of hosts we were able to test, your mileage may very, plugins in mirror may be larger than they appear.”

To all WordPress users, keep on submitting feedback for future features because at long last we are starting to see some excellent enhancements to the community software that I personally enjoy. Especially due to the fact that I need fewer addon plugins such as Redirection (changing Permalinks and not losing the old link structure in the search engine listing) and a few others because WordPress have integrated more functionality into the basic installation. There was a time when I refused to switch from version 1.5 to 2.0+ because I would lose too many important plugins. However in making that decision I found my blog became vulnerable to potential Phising robots so I had no choice but to go ahead and upgrade to the leastest version of WordPress. As a resulted I had to wave goodbye to some of my most treasured plugins. However as most of those lost plugins are built-in it has become a win-win situation.

Good luck to everyone who makes a success of the new upgrade to their blogs. I’ll be right with you very soon, maybe.

For now I will upgrade some of my plugins due, Sociable 2.6 and Google Sitemaps 3.0.3.1.

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Comments

2 Responses to “Are You Ready For WordPress 2.5?”

Jeffmakepeace on April 13th, 2008 10:49 am

Hi there, There are many Blogs which I have seen such hubpages, squidoo, wordpress, blogspot. Among these, squidoo has very nice features and you can do promote your website very quickly in less effort.
Nancy P Redford on April 13th, 2008 11:22 am

Hi Jeff,

I know what you mean when you say you can blog with less effort using these services.

However when I first set up my blog the choices were very slim. The major two free blogging platforms were Wordpress.com and Blogger.com

I decided to host my blog on my own domain to keep control over my content. With free services they can delete your blog at any time. I’m sure you’ve heard that even some top affiliate marketer’s have had their entire blogs “flagged’ on blogger.com or deleted on Wordpress.com because they are promoting affiliate programs or home business programs.

Imagine all you weeks, months, or years of content gone in a moment!

Upgrading my WordPress software is a hassle BUT I know as long as I’ve paid my hosting fees my site will REMAIN online.

Hubpages, Squidoo etc are good for SEO and promotions but again the rules can change at any given time so I would not put all my eggs into one basket especially as that basket is owned by a third party.

For me it’s all about ownership and control of my own content.

I can go to sleep and come back to my site and I know it will ALWAYS be LIVE and readily available.

Just my 2 cents,

Nancy
P.S.
I would set up free blogs to link back to my websites but NEVER use them as my main blog.