There has been an incredible amount of hype circulating around the WordPress community during the past few weeks regarding the up-and-coming release of WordPress 2.7. 2.7 should most definitely take the cake for the most-hyped release of WordPress, thanks to the brand new administration panel that will be coming along with the new release–the first major administration panel redesign since… the end of last March.

Indeed, it hasn’t even been eight months yet since the release of WordPress 2.5, which came billed as having a radically newer, cleaner, and less cluttered administration panel and Dashboard. However, as I mentioned in my WordPress 2.5 review, its administration panel really wasn’t that different, other than having a newer theme that was much brighter on the eyes, compared to the blue colors of WP 2.0-2.3.

And so, apparently, the good folks at WordPress went back to the drawing board this summer to look at how to further improve the WordPress admin interface, but this time, they came up with a codename for the new project called Crazyhorse (though I don’t get what’s so crazy about making software better), and this time, they claimed to use lasers in their testing. Great. (Actually, they apparently talked all about it at a WordCamp SF 2008 session that I missed because I had to leave early.) And since then, the hype has been alive and well on the WordPress Development Blog. They’ve been doing surveys since September to get feedback on what the interface should be like, showing off videos and stuff about what the new Dashboard looks like, and for Pete’s sake, they’ve even announced each beta release of 2.7 on their development blog, something that they’ve never done before! (It might be smart if they put a warning in their beta release posts about some of the possible problems inherent with running a beta for those crazy people out there who upgrade and then find something screwing up…)

I have given the latest Beta 3 of WordPress 2.7 a try, on a separate testing installation. (All of my live blogs are still using 2.6 and I won’t be updating until 2.7 is final.) While I am going to save a complete review until after it goes final and I’ve had a chance to give it a try on my REAL blogs, I will say that the new layout is quite impressive once you start to figure it out–the transition takes awhile to adjust to. The navigation has fundamentally changed (gone are the “Write”/”Manage” verbs that used to be part of the navigation and in their place are nouns like “Posts”, “Pages”, “Media”, and “Links”), and there’s a lot more AJAX inserted into useful spots. Many of the screens are now a lot easier to rearrange and customize to your liking, and satisfy a number of qualms about things that I felt should have been in WordPress 2.5. There are a couple of unexpected glitches that randomly pop-up, particularly in the drop-down navigation menus, so it is going to take awhile for me to fully adapt. But then again, it took me awhile to fully adapt to WordPress 2.5 as well, but I did.

All in all, I’m looking forward to the eventual release of WordPress 2.7, which will definitely help make WordPress a more attractive option for bloggers and content creators. Quite frankly, I think it would serve it more justice to make it WordPress 3.0, but I don’t really have much say in that now, do I?

Tags: 2.7, administration, Automattic, beta, Blogging, Crazyhorse, Dashboard, interface, preview, release, WordPress

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Well, WordPress 2.5 has been released for about a week now, and I’ve been able to grace Webmacster87.info with its presence after spending some time last night doing an update. I’ve had some opportunities to play around with the new admin interface and some of the other changes, and since this is such a significant update to WordPress, what better time to do a review of the update? So, I’m going to take the time now to discuss some of the things that I like about the update, some of the things that I don’t like, as well as talking about some of the things that I’ve done to Webmacster87.info during last night’s update.
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Tags: 2.5, administration, Dashboard, features, interface, review, update, widgets, WordPress

I must say that I am. Granted, WordPress does have the best admin layout of any blog/CMS platform that I’ve ever used, but I have had my share of picky points to complain about here and there. But yesterday, the folks at Automattic released WordPress 2.5, which they have deemed to be the biggest UI change since 1.5 came out three years ago. The main attraction of 2.5 is a brand new administration layout that is much more user-oriented. It has a much nicer, better-flowing layout that also permits a nice amount of customization. (And the Dashboard is actually useful now, woo hoo!)

So, the good news with WordPress 2.5 is that it’s got a lot of great new features. However, the bad news with WordPress 2.5 is that it’s got a lot of great new features. That means that if you’ve heavily customized your WordPress installation with plugins or theme tweaks, you may need to think a couple of times before you begin the 2.5 honeymoon. A wide number of incompatible plugins have been listed by the community, and if you use some of the more popular plugins listed at the bottom of the page, you may need to hold your horses for a week or two until the authors start rolling out some updates. I know that I’m going to be holding off for awhile until I have a significant amount of time to dedicate to updating. Also, due to the size of this upgrade, doing a very comprehensive backup will be HIGHLY recommended.

However, congratulations to Automattic on this release, and I look forward to examining it in more detail.

Tags: 2.5, administration, Automattic, backup, blog, Dashboard, layout, release, upgrading, user interface, WordPress