Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress, has announced on the WordPress development blog that WordPress 2.5 “could be released today.” However, we all know that’s not going to happen! Still, he’s keeping your interest by releasing a ‘Sneak Peek’ download so that developers can test what’s to come in one of the most anticipated releases from WordPress.
The software is basically done and stable, and could be released today, but we’d like to incorporate feedback from a wider audience before making it available to the general public. After a few days of your feedback we’ll set a final release date. Personally, I can’t wait.
Upgrades To Expect in WordPress 2.5
- A customizable dashboard
- Multi-file upload
- Built-in galleries
- One-click plugin upgrades
- Tag management
- Built-in Gravatars
- Full text feeds
- Faster load times
Thoughts On WP 2.5
I’m looking forward to the customizable dashboard and one click plugin upgrades. The latter is something that has always bothered me when dealing with WordPress. Here’s a screenshot of what the new dashboard should resemble.
The new Dashboard is focused on the most relevant tasks at hand: a quick summary of what’s published and scheduled for publication, the latest comments and incoming links, blog stats, and WordPress updates and news. You can add your own RSS feeds and edit the way information is presented so that the new Dashboard conforms to the way you use WordPress.
According to the announcement, the dashboard is one of the ignored features of the WordPress platform. Well Matt, it’s just not very informative. Maybe if more stats and graphs were added we’d pay more attention to it.
However, I’m loving this new interface, but, still want native stats and graphs! It’s so clean and just seems a lot more useful than the current WordPress dashboard.I think this new style and activity layout will have me checking the dashboard a lot more.
[…] we’ve cut the number of navigation options in half, separating the primary functions (writing, managing posts and pages, editing the blog’s design, and managing comments) from secondary functions. This presents information at a more comfortable pace, revealing only the information that’s necessary.[…]
Everything you need is still there — just better organized. (Especially for people new to WP.)
The style scheme you see pictured is integrated across the board. I think the release will please a lot of users in the eye candy department. Very Googly/Web 2.0-ish Matt! Overall, I’m quite impressed and definitely looking forward to the upgrade! Looks like the company really listened to it’s users in this one!
***UPDATE: Head over here to view the WordPress 2.5 Demo Site!
How about you: What do you think of WordPress 2.5? Will it fail? Or does it have enough potential to succeed?
Sneak Peek and Download of WordPress 2.5 RC1
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