It’s now a week since WordPress 2.5 was released. I’ve managed, without any dramas, to upgrade all twelve blogs at www.duncans.tv and www.postkiwi.com.
Dashboard, rather than the first in the menu, is now a small link at the top of the screen.
Menu on the Left
Write, the first item on the new menu, now has the options of post, page, and link.
Manage, the second item on the new menu, has the options of post, pages, links, categories, tags, link categories, media library, import, export, backup.
The best thing about the latest upgrade is that we can access quickly all posts, published posts, and drafts. We can access posts by months and categories.
Design and Widgets
Presentation has changed to Design. We have the option of changing themes, editing themes, and working with sidebar widgets, as in the latest version of 2.3. However now we can name text widgets, cutting out the need for guesswork when editing. However the drag and drop facility has been replaced by an ‘add’ link. Which means that temporarily removing widgets, or moving them from one sidebar to another, is a real pain. Once the widget is on the sidebar the only options are editing or deleting. For some reason my text boxes including Feedburner RSS information cannot be edited or deleted.
Comments
Comments is now a menu in itself. The number appearing above the comments menu refers to the number waiting in the moderation queue. Comments awaiting moderation are now highlighted, but not separated on to another screen.
Menu on the Right
Settings (was Options), Plugins and Users menus have been placed on the right hand side of the dashboard.
Time has to be calculated manually for daylight saving. But here in Queensland we don’t have to worry about that!
Discussion options include the capacity to allow for Gravatars – pictures associated with commenters.
The permalink structure now caters for tags as well as categories.
Miscellaneous includes predetermining the sizes of uploaded thumbnails and medium pictures.
Plugins Settings
The Plugins, as in the latest version of 2.3, inform the user when a more up to date version is available. You have the option of downloading the plugin for yourself and transferring via FTP, or upgrading with one click of the mouse. Clearly if you have customised plugins, you’ll want to ignore the invitation to automatically upgrade.
Technorati Tags or Internal Tags?
The default for WordPress is internal tags, with a widget for a tag cloud included. To tell the truth, for all my work on including Technorati tags over two years, I have had very very few visits or clicks out as a result. I’ve now chosen instead to use internal tags to increase the searchability of my sites. So, for example, you can now search for all posts referring to Guinness at Duncan’s TV Ad Land. Mind you could do that with the search engine before. However I can now reduce the number of categories on my blogs.
I’ve spent the last week going back through the archives at Duncan’s TV Ad Land, entering tags and tidying up posts. So far I’ve covered everything from 2003 to 2006. Just 2007 and 2008 to go!
Categories
The Categories menu is no longer on the right side of the post as you edit it. It’s below, under Tags. This may say something about the priorities of the WordPress community. A useful tool here is the ‘most used’ option which shows the top 10 categories in order of usage.
Related Posts
It seems WordPress 2.5 assumes that Related Posts plugin is installed. No big drama. Just remember to activate the script in the settings to make sure it’s working.
Save, Preview, Publish
The Preview This Post, View This Post, Save, Publish options are all on the right hand side of the post being edited, along with quick links to ‘manage all coments’, ‘manage all posts’, ‘manage all categories’, ‘manage all tags’, and ‘view drafts’. Status includes Published, Unpublished and Pending Review. When editing an already published post or page, as soon as any changes are saved you have the options of continuing to edit, viewing the post/page, or returning to the view from which you started editing (archive or single page).
The Pending Review option is designed for shared blogs – identifying posts that need a look from others before publishing.
More Info at WordPress
Have a look through the behind-the-scenes explanations by Matt Mullenweg.