WordPress 2.5 released, and all eyes turn to 2.6
If you're the more astute blogging type, it probably came to your attention a week or two ago that WordPress 2.5 was released. Depending on what kind of web space maintenance type person you are, you may or may not have upgraded immediately.Today's big admission at Download Squad is that some of us, ahem, ignored the Upgrade Now! link for the last two weeks. It wasn't that we didn't care. It wasn't that we didn't think it was important. We usually love the opportunity to click on new buttons and thingamahoosies and
Pfft. Yeah. Probably.
But hot on the heels of the 2.5 release comes lots of talk and flurry about WP 2.6. It's something that would strike a lot of users as odd. Sure, developers have roadmaps, and plans, and direction for future releases well before current releases are completely polished. It usually takes a little more than two weeks for those sorts of things to be laid out on the table.
It would strike people as odd if they hadn't already laid their eyes upon the radically different 2.5 dashboard.
Love it or hate it, the new dashboard is here to stay.
There seems to be very little middle ground with the new dashboard. It garners a strong reaction. Personally, most of us here think it's a little awkward and the default colors are pretty gross. Fortunately, there are a few themes for the dashboard that won't make your eyes burn, and we expect the numbers will grow. If you're feeling less adventurous, it is easy (though not terribly intuitive) to go into your user profile and change the color scheme to something less "fresh".
Certainly the most awkward feature of the new layout is the fact that tagging and categorizing posts requires the writer to scroll down the page. Huh? Why can't the categories, at least, remain on the side panel?
But the features of 2.5, in our book, make up for the extra effort spent scrolling and the assault on our retinas. Media galleries. Need we say more? Multi-photo uploading. And of course, by media, we actually mean... media. As in video, and audio, and still pictures. The responsiveness on the admin end is a bit sluggish with media manipulation and delivery. This could be a huge deal if your site relies on this sort of thing every day. We imagine, though, it's also one of those things that will most likely be addressed in 2.5.1, if not by 2.6.
WordPress is hot, and promising faster release cycles, more features, and increased ease of use (can you say: blogging from anywhere?). Having used just about every piece of blogging software under the sun for varying lengths of time, we can attest that WordPress is one of our favorites. Even if it takes us a long time to get motivated to upgrade.
You know, even if the dashboard is wearing all its favorite colors.
[Via WPCandy and a special thanks to Rob for kicking us into upgrade mode!]
