WordPress 2.5 - First Impressions

There's been a fair bit of buzz in the WordPress community about the hotly anticipated WordPress 2.5. I've only ever downloaded stable releases of the software, but being impatient tonight I decided to install the WordPress 2.5 release candidate. I backed up one of my less important blogs and went for an upgrade.

From Dougal Campbell's blog, the major new/upgraded features are:

• Faster load times.
• Multi-file uploads.
• New "Media Manager" for images, audio, video, etc.
• Built-in gallery function.
• Built-in (and pluggable) Gravatars support.
• New backend design.
• One-click auto-update for plugins.
• Reactivate plugins after a 'Deactivate All Plugins' action.

There are a few things I want to look at. Load times, Gravatar support and deactivating plugins aren't of interest to me. I've got stuff to say about the other features though...

Multi-file Uploads & Media Manager

This is a pretty sweet update. I remember Mullenweg said in an interview a while back that he'd want to concentrate on making WordPress a true multimedia platform. The new media management features go a fair way toward achieving this.

First, you can multi-select files to upload, then via some AJAXy voodoo they get uploaded automatically to your blog, sort of the way gMail handles file attachments.

Then you've got a much improved and less intrusive gallery feature to help you locate your uploads and insert them into your blog posts. Trust me, it's all very beautiful and will bring a tear to your eye. (The Gallery Insert feature is pretty sweet, too)

The New WordPress Admin Interface

Oh crap, they've rearranged everything! That's the first impression of the new wp-admin pages.

However, it's a simple matter of flicking through the various top-level options to see where your regular menu options have moved to. It'll take a bit of getting used to, but it moves WordPress more toward being a logically laid out application. The task-based writing and management are located to the left and the options/plugin management are to the right, which is slightly better for usability.

The redesign is worthy of note. A really nice modernisation of the WordPress backend that many WP aficionados have been waiting years for. The interface work is actually quite outstanding - lesser used features are gracefully tucked out of the way (the post time/date feature, for example), while you can easily see your most used categories when posting and there's a series of useful related links to get you to other useful parts of WordPress. I like.

One-Click Plugin Updates

Every CMS needs this - wow! Since WordPress gained the ability to 'tell' us when a plugin was out of date, it was only natural they'd eventually offer a more straightforward upgrade path.

This is beyond my wildest dreams though. On the first go, WordPress will prompt you for your FTP details for the server. Once you enter those, it retrieves the latest version, extracts and installs it. Awe. Some.

I've heard a few complaints about the stability of the plugin updater, but from my experience, it was just fine. In fact, it was stunningly easy and will make managing a WordPress blog soooo much easier.

Other Observations

With the blog I updated to 2.5, there were no notable problems with the theme, which is a good sign.

The claim of faster load times I can't comment on. I certainly didn't notice any better performance. Might be a suggestion for the next major release if they integrate Donncha's WP Super Cache into the core WordPress install. It'd be nice to have that running out of the box.

All in all though, it's a fantastic jump forward for the WordPress platform, although I still can't help wondering what happened to the WordPress Shuttle admin theme that we were promised a few years back...