A look at WordPress 2.5
A major WordPress upgrade is coming: WordPress 2.5. Here is my breakdown of new, exciting features.
WordPress has been a primary source of income for me. It has been the driving force behind my success in my local communities. A major WordPress upgrade is coming: WordPress 2.5. Because of it’s impending release, I will be postponing the completion of several projects in order to be able to support the newer, better WP 2.5. Please enjoy looking at some screenshots of 2.5! Click any shot to make it bigger.
New Administration Interface
A total revamp has taken place. A light-blue and orange color scheme looks progressive, some say it’s too artsy. As you can see, the new color scheme is fresh, and definitely unique. Use of the color orange shows important HUD-style information. You can see it used in the comments menu, where a count of unapproved comments is shown.
The administration panels have been “divided” into the left tabs and the right tabs. The left tabs reflect pages that will effect your site’s content. The right tabs reflect settings for the site, such as plugins.
From the Dashboard, you can see several tasks, including links to write posts (blog entries) and pages. The shortcut to the page writing screen is a welcome addition.
New Post Writing Features
Developers have also revamped the post writing experience, including MUCH better media management, and plugin-free media embedding capabilities. You can easily embed images, audio, and video with WordPress 2.5. Also, rather than uploading, you can hotlink media from another website with ease. When you upload media, you can upload MULTIPLE files at the same time.
When adding photos, you have a new size available: medium. It’s an intermediate between thumbnails and full-sized. The photo add screen will let you apply css classes to images using a pleasant wizard-style GUI. Theme developers should note that adding css classes align-left, align-right, and align-center to your css will allow users to utilize these new layout features.
Uploaded media also appears in the Manage > Media Library tab, where you can easily flip through sort and filter uploads by file type and search by name. The media listing shows where certain assets have been used, and offers a permalink to the asset.
Improved search
WordPress search will examine posts and pages for content in WP 2.5 without additional plugins or hacks. The WordPress community’s cries have been answered. Previously, I preferred using the Search Everything plugin.
Better Security Practices
A new class has been in the WordPress codebase, called $wp->prepare. It basically takes user input and sanitizes it for safe database storage. WordPress 2.5 expects developers to begin using $wp-prepare to ramp up security.
Work on the XML-RPC interface has been completed as well. As for performance? I don’t know what the status is. I imagine that all fortifications will need to remain in place for high-traffic sites.
WordPress 2.5 is expected to be completed by March 10, 2008.
For more on WordPress 2.5
- See the codex article here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_2.5
- WordPress interface guidelines
- Download a nightly build.
About Brad
Brad Kovach is an award-winning web developer from Afton, Wyoming. In his spare time, he enjoys drumming on Rock Band, and playing with this website.
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The New Wordpress Has Arrived… « H I T - Hokanson’s Instructional Technology
On April 5th, 2008
12:28 pm
[...] My good friend Brad Kovach has a nice explanation of the new features of Wordpress 2.5. Obviously he is using the actual install, but what he shares is beneficial and I know it will answer several questions that may arise. Read his article at the following link: A look at Wordpress 2.5 [...]