Wordpress 2.5 Review
So, I’ve been on WordPress since January of 2006. I previously used Blogger, which was nice for a hosted solution (but I wouldn’t pick it today…I’d use WordPress.com) and then when I moved to my own domain, I used WordPress.
Last weekend, I upgraded my WordPress installation to the newly-released 2.5, which represented a complete overhaul of the administrative interface, designed by the fine folks at Happy Cog. There have been a ton of reviews. I’m not going to recount all of them, I’ll just share my experience.
The actual upgrade was easy (as usual).
WordPress is notorious for their 5-minute install or upgrade. I thought there might be a more extensive upgrade process than in the past since 2.5 actually changed some of the MySQL database tables, but it was extremely easy.
The admin interface is clean (but everything is really big).
I’m not sure about how Happy Cog chose to align the grid. I love the new comment bubbles, but getting used to a whole new admin interface is a little weird. I wish there were some tutorials on customizing the interface (there are, but I’m too lazy to look extensively for them), but one thing I’ve always disliked is the Dashboard. I like that I can customize it now with the feeds that I want to see.
I like the fullscreen writing feature, but the default fonts are a little big for my tastes. I’m tempted to go into the CSS for the admin, but I’m scared of it. I don’t want to mess with Stan’s code. I do like that the default font is now Lucida Grande…that I like. Much better typography.
My custom theme held up pretty well.
I’m very happy that my custom theme didn’t break, although one of the plugins I’ve used since the beginning doesn’t work in the sidebar anymore. (If you’re wondering, it was the plugin that showed the recently added comments.) It’s not surprising that it broke the plugin because it was originally written back at the tail end of 2006. For now, that little feature has gone away. I’m not nearly smart enough to write that plugin. Would love for someone to fix it though.
So far, it’s kind of slow.
There seems to be a bit of a lag with publishing posts and loading admin pages. Are any readers out there having speed issues? Maybe it’s just on the admin side…
Anyway, that’s my review. I really like the look of the interface, but it will take some getting used to. I realize that much of what I’m referring to has nothing to do with the readers, but for those that run WordPress, you’ll know what I’m talking about if you decide to upgrade. I know that The D has been experimenting with it and I haven’t seen any profanity-laced WordPress posts from him, so that’s always good.