Although I’ve already installed and tried WordPress 2.5 Release Candidate 2 in my sandbox last week, I’m still getting used to the way the content/options are displayed on this new version of WordPress. Fortunately for me, the upgrade went smoothly and I’m glad I didn’t encounter any issues or setbacks during the upgrade process. All of the plugins I previously used had were working and had no conflicts except for the Popularity Contest plugin by Alex King which required a minor fix.

Apparently, the WordPress dashboard is not the only one that got a facelift but the whole WordPress site itself which uses the same design/color scheme like WordPress 2.5.

The new design/layout is cool and looks much better and if you ask me, the timing couldn’t have been any better. Besides, a WorPress.org theme redesign or reboot was long overdue IMO.

Anyways, back to the topic at hand. Right now, I’m not using any admin theme which is quite unusual coz I’ve always used either the Tiger Style Admin or Spotmilk admin themes the past few years. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Tiger Style Admin doesn’t work in WordPress 2.5 because of the admin changes so I had to drop it. There is however a new alternative, called the Fluency Admin theme by Dean J Robinson but I’m not using it because when I tried it out, the option to edit the permalink (option found under the post title) wasn’t showing up. Thinking that it could be an issue on Firefox, I tried using it on Internet Explorer only to find out that like the Tiger Style Admin, the Fluency Admin theme doesn’t work on IE. So I ended up deactivating the plugin and reverting to the default WP dashboard which isn’t such a bad thing.

Widgets aren’t new to WordPress but in 2.5, you can add widgets to the dashboard. In my case, I’ve installed the WP-Stats plugin even though I already have the Firestats plugin. Just wanted to try it out and see if it gathers stats that are different from the ones that I get from Firestats. If the data it collects are the redundant, then I’ll just uninstall it.

I like the Password strength meter which helps you create a strong password in case you need to change your current password or if you need a new one. I also like the built-in tag manager that lets me add, rename or delete tags from within the dashboard. I used to have the a tag manager plugin installed so this means one less plugin for me.

There is one thing however about upgrading to WordPress 2.5 that got me disappointed. After the upgrade, I found out that the Akismet Auntie Spam maintenance script doesn’t work. For those of you who are not familiar with it, it’s a Greasemonkey script for the Firefox browser and made for WordPress or WordPress MU installations, built to work alongside Akismet for a fast and easy way of managing spam comments. I’ve been using it for quite a while now and I can say that it’s a real time saver. I’m thinking about writing a review about it once a working version for WordPress 2.5 is released.

UPDATE: The author just informed me that Akismet Auntie Spam 2.20 is now available for download. This version has WP 2.5 support and is backwards compatible to 2.3.

Have you upgraded your WordPress installation to 2.5? If not, why haven’t you upgraded yet? For those of you who have upgraded to WordPress 2.5, did you encounter any issues or problems during the upgrade process? Were there any plugins that you had to get rid of?

Another good thing about the delay is that it gives us WordPress users, theme and plugin authors more time to prepare. Here are the changes in WordPress 2.5 that could affect the performance and functionality of some plugins:

• Admin Menu Changes
• Admin Screens
• Activation Global Scope
• Hook Changed: restrict_manage_posts
• TinyMCE Upgrade to Version 3

For a more detailed description on these changes, check out this document on Migrating Plugins and Themes to WordPress 2.5. Also, if you want to check whether the plugins you’re currently using are compatible with WordPress 2.5 or not, go over and take a look at the Plugin Compatibility list.

So far, only one of the plugins I’m currently using has a conflict but unfortunately it’s one of my favorite plugins – the Tiger Style Admin. With too many admin changes in WordPress 2.5, this plugin won’t work any more. Too bad coz I really like this plugin and I know many of you guys do too. Also, the Tiger Style Admin fix I posted last month becomes useless. I do hope the author would update it or someone would create a new admin theme just like it for the new version of WordPress.

If you can’t wait to get your hands on WordPress 2.5 or can’t wait to see how the new interface looks like, you can try and see it for yourself on this demo blog provided by Chris Johnston. Btw, the version of WordPress used for this demo blog is a beta version so some of the stuff you see could be different in the final version.

Lastly, to help you prepare and make your blog ready for WordPress 2.5, make sure you go over and read this WordPress Upgrade Preparation Checklist by Lorelle VanFossen.

Is your blog ready for WordPress 2.5? Have you updated your themes and plugins? Do you have any plugins currently installed that have issues or conflicts with WordPress 2.5? I’d like to hear your thoughts and opinion.

When WordPress 2.3 was released, there were many plugins that were affected like the Extended Live Archives and Ultimate Tag Warrior. The Tiger Style Admin was also affected but unlike other compatibility issues that some plugins had, it only has a couple issues with the formatting. If you have tried using Tiger Style Admin on WP 2.3+ I think you know what I’m talking about.

For the sake of those who don’t, what happened is that the WP dashboard footer which contains the WordPress version, Documentation and Feedback isn’t aligned properly and floats above it’s proper place.

Before:

After:

The other issue is the “View site »” link in the upper right corner of the dashboard which can be barely seen because of the small font size. I was able to fix these issues by editing some code in the Tiger Style Admin’s stylesheet.

Before:

After:

In order to fix these issues, here’s what you need to do:

• Open the wp-admin-tiger/wp-admin-tiger_files/tiger.css file with a text editor.
• Look for line 262 or the #footer section.

It would look like this:

#footer { position:fixed; bottom:0; left:0; background: #EFEFEF url (ol_admin_images/wordpress-logo.gif) no-repeat 0 50%; border-top:1px solid CCC; height:22px; padding:0; width:100%; text-align:right; line-height:21px; z-index:99; font-size:10px; color:#666; }

Add the value highlighted in bold:

#footer { position:fixed; bottom:0; left:0; background: #EFEFEF url (ol_admin_images/wordpress-logo.gif) no-repeat 0 50%; border-top:1px solid CCC; height:22px; padding:0; margin:0; width:100%; text-align:right; line-height:21px; z-index:99; font-size:10px; color:#666; }

• Look for line 305 or the #wphead h1 span a section.

Original code (edit value highlighted in bold):

#wphead h1 span a { position:fixed; top:0px; line-height: 23px; padding:0; margin:0; right: 10px; color: #CCC !important; display: block; font-size:86%; font-weight:normal; text-shadow: none; background: url (ol_admin_images/world_go.png) no-repeat 0 50%; padding:0 0 0 20px; z-index:101; }

Change value to 225%:

#wphead h1 span a { position:fixed; top:0px; line-height: 23px; padding:0; margin:0; right: 10px; color: #CCC !important; display: block; font-size:225%; font-weight:normal; text-shadow: none; background: url (ol_admin_images/world_go.png) no-repeat 0 50%; padding:0 0 0 20px; z-index:101; }

• Save the file and upload back to the plugin folder. (If necessary, overwrite the existing file)
• Refresh or hit F5.

That should do it. After you refresh the page, you’d be able to see the View site link in the right font size and footer should be in it’s proper place.

NOTES: The code I presented above is not in the exact format and have been edited for presentation purposes. So don’t copy and paste it into the original file. You’ll have to type in the values yourself. Another thing to take note, unfortunately for Internet Explorer users the Tiger Style Admin still doesn’t work with Internet Explorer. The Tiger Style Admin theme works in the latest versions of FireFox, Flock and Opera. However, if you’re using Opera, you don’t have to edit the font size value of the View site link.

Anyone else experienced this issues when using Tiger Style Admin in WP 2.3+? Please let me know if you tried this fix and if it fixed the issues or not. Thank you!