Are You Ready for WordPress 2.5?
February 18, 2008 | By Lorelle VanFossen | Filed Under Featured, Features, WordPress
WordPress 2.5 is on it’s way. It’s now due March 10, 2008. Are you ready?
As a WordPress blogger, you need to be ready to upgrade your blog. Why not take time now to clean up your Theme, fix all those little nagging things desperately in need of fixing, and make note of all the customizations, WordPress Plugins, and code hacks you’ve done with your blog. A little homework can make the process faster, easier, and less stressful.
WordPress Theme Designers Must Prepare for Changes
As a WordPress Theme designer, have you updated and prepared your Theme for the new additions and features coming to WordPress? Like the improved ability to allow multiple sidebars in a WordPress Theme, addition of is_front_page() query for Themes to display content specific to the front page of the blog, new ability to limit the tree depth of wp_dropdown_categories() and wp_list_categories(), new post query function for ordering posts randomly, and the inclusion of get_avatar() for Themes to automatically include Gravatars and avatars.
Have you checked in on the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users, for the latest news and information on Migrating WordPress Plugins and Themes to WordPress 2.5?
WordPress Plugin Authors Update Your Plugins Now
As a WordPress Plugin author, is your WordPress Plugin updated and ready to work with the new improvements and changes in the core of WordPress? With the changes in the documentation and feature updates and deprecations in the pluggable.php file? Have you been monitoring the latest security news and reports on vulnerabilities found in many WordPress Plugins and making sure that yours doesn’t pose a security risk to users?
Have you been keeping track of the changes to the WordPress Administration Panels interface and how they will impact your WordPress Plugin such as the merger of the Merging of Profile and Edit User Panels, addition of “meta boxes” to write post forms, and new interface for Widget management for Widget-style Plugins?
What about the exciting new features like the Media Library for uploading images and multimedia files, and the work being done on the Automatic Upgrade feature? Working on a Plugin to enhance these?
Some of the changes are making some popular WordPress Plugins incompatible by including them or a version of their code into the WordPress core programming, such as the integration of the popular Optimal Title WordPress Plugin technique of putting the post title first followed by the blog title and the new Tag Management Panel to edit tags.
With all of the changes, it pays to track the functions that are added and removed from service. You can track them with Peter Westwood’s Deprecated Functions List.
If you are considering writing a WordPress Plugin, or making improvements to the one you have, check out Adam Brown’s WordPress Hooks Database for a version-specific listing of the hooks you need to know for your Plugin.
Tracking WordPress Development News
As each major upgrade is released, volunteers work overtime to test WordPress Plugins and Themes to determine their compatibility with the new version. These are listed in the WordPress Codex: WordPress Theme Compatibilities and WordPress Plugin Compatibilities.
Other sources for tracking news about WordPress development and new features are:
- WordPress Development Updates - using the new Prologue WordPress Theme to track ongoing development news (feed)
- WordPress Development Blog (feed)
- Westi on WordPress - Weekly WordPress Development Digest (feed)
- Ryan Boren (feed)
- WordPress.com Blog (feed) (WordPress.com often sees the latest features before the release to the public)
- WordPress Support Forum
- Andy Skelton (feed)
- MDAWaffe - Michael Adams (feed)
- Mark on WordPress (feed)
- Peter Westwood - Wordpress (feed)
- Weblog Tools Collection (feed)
- WordPress Publisher Blog (feed)
- WordPress Planet (feed)
And as always, your main source for news about WordPress and the WordPress Community is found here on the Blog Herald in my WordPress Wednesday News reports.
About the author: The author of Lorelle on WordPress, as well as several other blogs, Lorelle VanFossen has been blogging in one fashion or another for over 14 years, covering travel, nature and travel photography, web design, web theory and development, blogging, and WordPress extensively as web technologies developed. Lorelle is also the author of the fast-selling book, Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging, available in the new Blog Herald Bookstore. Lorelle will be speaking at WordCamp Dallas March 29-30, the Alliance for Distance Education in California Summit April 2-5, 2008, and the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference May 2-5 in Chicago.
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Not to sound like a whiner, but that new admin UI is gonna take a bunch of getting used to… everytime I write a post, I am constantly scrolling around… I do like the new look, and some things are massively improved, but the overall usability factor has gone down…
@Mr Papa:
Are you looking at the newest version? The versions of the Administration Panels that are “sneak previews” are not the final version. Improvements are still ongoing.
Sure, the new interface will take some time to get used to. That’s the way of things. A lot of research went into the improvements with experienced users of all levels providing input and feedback. Over the next couple of versions it will get tweaked and improved, so be patient. That’s just the nature of the beast.
I’m really intrigued with the new image handling feature. ANYTHING has got to be better than this one-upload at a time mess. :D
I am very excited by 2.5, I am keeping mum about the new features which I do not know of. The idea of reducing 2 plugins for my blog with 2.5 is a huge bonus - Gravatars and Tags management. Way to go WordPress, I can’t wait for March 10.
Yes, its the latest actually pulled from SVN… I agree that lots have been improved and the overall look is nice… but that write post page really bothers me… I have to scroll just to enter a catgory.. I have to scroll to do tags… I have to scroll to set the slug, the custom fields, etc… and granted, I had to scroll from some already…
Another thing I wish they would have implemented was dropdown menus, but luckily plugins easily fix that…
It probably not fair to center on the bad, but that always seems to be the easist… After enough time, most will probably like it better and I agree, they will improve it too..
This is the first I had heard that the functionality from optimal title was being put in the core…wish it would have been like that from the beginning :-) Thanks for the quick summary of things to look out for in the new version.
I personally use blogger.
Do you need a server with php to use wordpress?
Eerik
@Eerik:
Yes. See Hosting WordPress for specifics. Or switch to WordPress.com.
Yes the new interface in administration panel is heavy. My widescreen show me 1200px width text- this I can’t read they are extremly too long.=usability is gone :(
write - custom-fields-trackbacks- categories ie and then scroll UP to safe?
Nobody can tell me that this logical. All buttons are on the left side - why?
oh my dear:usability and accessibility is gone -far far away.
regards
Monika
@Monika:
Remember, the new interface you are seeing is not yet final. They may make last minute fixes and changes before the release and some will be made on the path to the next release. This is a major overhaul of the Administration Panels, and I expect a lot of positive and negative responses. Peaking before it’s really final means often seeing it before it’s really ready. :D
Your article made me want to first upgrade my blog, then start using it!
Well written, will take a look at the new version, hope the upgrade goes smoothly :)
btw I think this very blog should have the latest comments to come up top of the page and not at the bottom, but it’s just a suggestion :)
Blog are goods for every one where we get all information we needed nice job keep it up !
http://www.nice-remedies.com
We need MBL avatars to be included as well. :D
我只希望2.5可以解决速度这个问题。现在的WP速度太慢了。不知道WP为什么会这样。
Nice post and I wished my experience with WP had been a good one lol in one month I did more updates than blog posts, then yesterday I spent an hour on a post, and after publishing it I couldn’t see any posts at all.
I messed with it for 10 minutes then simply wiped the slate clean. Blog’s gone. Oh well..
@Broccoletto:
Clearly there is more wrong than something with WordPress. The more you mess with things, the more likely they are to break. That’s a real world lesson, not a WordPress one. :D
Updating WordPress is a couple minute effort, unless you have a lot of WordPress Plugins or Theme issues that also needed updates.
Millions are using WordPress in all types and styles without any major problems. Wonder what your problem was…guess we won’t ever know. Luckily, you can remove it if you want to.
Hmm as a graphic designer im not convinced that this admin theme is the best option. Its better in some respects like the organisation but the colours… hmm
Hi,
Definitely upgrade. It is an improvement for the best.
I hesitate to install new “dot” version of applications, particular open source as I state in:
Wordpress 2.5 - new version released. Should I upgrade?
On the other hand, the more people install and feed that back to Wordpress, the quicker 2.5.1 comes out with more improvements.
And I love that about Wordpress. How flexible and dynamic it is.
I’m facing a very frustrating problem after upgrading to 2.5
none of the comments on the pages are visible. even the ‘add comment’ box is not visible.
I was using the ‘Default’ theme.
When i changed to ‘Classic’ theme, everything works.
Any chance someone could help ?
@Pratheesh:
Help is available 24 hours a day for free in the WordPress Support Forums. Search the forums to see if someone else has had the problem and then ask if they haven’t. Have you tried one of the thousands of other Themes out there? The problem could be isolated with a bad upload of the Default WordPress Theme.