Finally, WordPress 2.5!

Yes, the long wait is FINALLY over for WordPress 2.5 as it was released this weekend. I was out the whole day Saturday and found out it was already released later that night. I was too tired to do the upgrade but I downloaded it anyways hoping I could do it the next day. However, as some of you already know I spend Sunday for family time and was out again the whole day so I had no time to do the upgrade. I was finally able to do the upgrade this morning and I didn’t have any issues or problems as the upgrade process went smoothly. I’m glad I made sure that my blog was ready for WordPress 2.5.

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.

WordPress Site Reboot

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 because 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?

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23 Comments

  1. @Riz – Sorry for the late reply. Btw, have you found a fix to this issue? I haven’t tried using TwitterTools before so I have no idea how it works.

    What version are you using? Have you tried asking Alex King himself? Since he’s the plugin author, he’d be the best person to ask.

    No worries, you can ask me anytime and I’ll try to answer your questions the best I can. Btw, thanks for the kind words! :)

  2. I’ve searched far and wide to no avail. So I guess I’m kinda hoping I could find an answer from you hehe. You have an idea why my twittertools is not updating? :) hehe.

    LOL, sorry naman ginawa kang tech support. :)

    Amazing what you did to this site, Jaypee. This is beyond blogging already! Ibang level na! :)

  3. @sylv3rblade – Hehe is that so? Oh well, I don’t think I’ll ever enjoy using the rich text editor.

    The issue you’re talking about regarding the widgets is a non-issue on my installation. I can access/manage widgets without any problems. Must be a conflict with one of your installed plugins.

  4. @mr nice ash – That was fast! Anyways, you mentioned that TLA was the only plugin installed so I thought you didn’t have Akismet.

    About the admin theme, at first I also didn’t plan to use an admin theme but then I changed my mind. Why? Because the Fluency Admin makes it easier to access the options, makes everything more organized and more compact especially the plugins page. :)

  5. @Kuya Jaypee
    ah.. hehe I was like that for quite a while too. The Rich Text Editor made me lazy :razz:

    @Dean
    I think I found a bug. I can’t access my widgets when fluency is on.

  6. Akismet is there by default. Of course I use it. Hehe…

    I'm not installing other theme anymore. I like the new dashboard…

  7. @sylv3rblade – I see. So you use the visual editor huh? I dunno, but for me I prefer to manually type in the code and have more control over the way my posts are written/displayed. :)

    I’ve installed Fluency Admin 1.1 after I read Dean’s comment here. All the previous bugs and flaws have been fixed/addressed including the one with Firestats. :D

  8. @mr nice ash – Yup, it is uber cool! Hehe :D No plugins? How about Akismet? You need to have that man. Have you used admin themes before or you don’t want to use one now coz the new dashboard is better?

  9. @Dean
    will try it tonight.. still busy with my err uhmm.. project :razz:
    I must admit, I love the plugin. It made me drop Windows Live Writer.

    @Kuya Jaypee
    Just the updated version of TinyMCE Advanced – IMO, version 3.0 works quite better than Windows Live Writer. BTW, your issue with Firestats is also present with WP-stats and any other stat plugin with a display page for that matter.

  10. This new version is cool… I don't have any plugins installed yet, just the TLA. Man, I think I don't need admin plugins now… :grin:

  11. @Dean – Thanks for the heads up on the new released version of Fluency Admin! I still have to install and try it on my dashboard but I’m glad to know that some of the bugs have been fixed.

    One of the other issues I had was with the Firestats plugin that I’m using, where the plugin page isn’t centered and the left portion is covered by the menu. I hope it works in this new version. :)

  12. @sylv3rblade you just need to upgrade to the latest release (see link at the bottom of my last comment) this has been fixed, along with several other things.

  13. @sylv3rblade – I saw the screenshot you provided and in my case, I didn’t experience those problems for both my blog and my sandbox. Since I’m not using the visual editor, I tried enabling it but the secondary items didn’t overlap.

    Btw, are you using other plugins that add options to the visual editor or tinymce options?

  14. @Dean – Yes, I tried and checked it with Fluency activated/deactivated and the problem exists when Fluency is activated. I’m using a custom permalink structure in my blog so I guess the problem has something to do with that.

    Anyways, thanks for dropping by and joining in the discussion. :)

  15. @Aarne – Sorry to hear about that too. I guess not everyone is fortunate with their WordPress 2.5 upgrades. Have you tried updating your permalink structure or any other fix? Like, Ronnie I hope you find a fix for that issue soon.

    Btw, I visited your blog and it looks good unfortunately I can’t read Estonian. Anyways, thanks for dropping by! :)

  16. ^ah..
    makes sense

    btw.. fluency seems to have problems with a secondary level with many items. It overlaps and some options are either unreadable or unclickable.

    Overall it’s a great plugin though

  17. @iRonnie – Sorry to hear about that. :(

    Have you tried any of the fixes suggested in the forums? I read a couple of fixes that helped users solve the issue. Anyways, hope you find the right fix soon. If you need help, just let me know okay? :)

  18. 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

    Does this only happen when Fluency is active? I saw this reported on the wp-testers mailing list a week or so before 25 was released and the explanation was that the field will appear after the first auto-save completes, and that the field doesn’t display at all if you’re using the default permalink schema. It was also mentioned that some custom permalinks weren’t working, not sure if it was resolved though.

  19. All my pages will give 404 error after upgrade to 2.5. It is somehow connected to permalink structure I use: /index.php/%postname%/. It happens on both IIS and Apache servers.

    Also, I’m not alone with this problem.

  20. i have upgraded mine and sad to say, i wish i didn’t. :( im now having problems uploading images for my post. it’s giving out an http error. i checked the wp forum and it seems im not alone in this.

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