Wordpress 2.5 First Impressions

If you’re a Wordpress user, you probably already know that version 2.5 was released a few days ago.

I upgraded one of my blogs yesterday and I have to say that I really don’t like it.

There are a couple of potentially great new features like multiple file uploads and galleries, but the biggest changes are in the look and feel of the back end interface.

Unfortunately, the developers seem to have confused “simple design” with “simple to use”. gone are the dark blue colours that clearly define different areas of the interface. Gone is the simple two-level tabbed navigation. In its place is an almost entirely white page, which makes it quite difficult to find the features you want at a glance.

I’ve posted a couple of times with the new interface and have found that doing simple things like quickly inserting images takes longer and involves more clicks.

Annoyingly, the “Save and Continue…” button on the post page has now gone entirely, in favour of automatic saving via Javascript. Unfortunately, this means you have to physically sit and wait until Wordpress decides to save your post before you can preview your latest changes.

I’ve also found several other minor bugs and annoyances - all of which are small, but add up to make Wordpress 2.5 a frustrating experience.

If you’re thinking of upgrading, I’d hold off until at least version 2.5.1. Hopefully some of the bugs will be fixed by then.