WordPress Administration Panel Preview: Upcoming 2.5

I took the opportunity to install the latest changes to the WordPress software we all know and love. Right now, the Administration Panel footer says I’m using 2.4-Bleeding - - it is the latest build as of 2.12.08. There are some things I just love about - - other things? Not so much. I do understand the design work on it is not completed yet. With a release date of sometime the middle to the end of March.. I would say WP has a ways to go.

The Dashboard. Have a look:

While I am not in love with the design… the colors or the layout - - what I am in love with is the ability to edit certain sections of the dashboard.. mainly the RSS Feeds that are fed into the Dashboard:

The Write Post page:
This page bothers me and I hope there’s more development to be done on it. All of the items that you’re used to having on the right sidebar is waaaaaaaay at the bottom. I have a feeling this is temporary and we’ll see those times wrap up to the right side soon (I suspect this is the reason for the blank white space to the right of the write post box).

WordPress Widgets
Looks like the Widgets page gets an overhaul, as well.

Instead of the Widget boxes being at the bottom… they are on the left site. This is nice and clean….maybe until you have a theme with three, four or five columns of widgets - - looks like there is a drop down menu so you can choose which sidebar you’re currently working with. Kind of nice… I rather liked having it all on one page so I could look at all the sidebars together and do a mental check on which widgets I’ve placed where - - now I have to choose the sidebar in the drop down and click “Go” to view each, individual sidebar within the Widget Panel.

The Widget boxes that we’re used to dragging into the sidebar are no longer ‘draggable’ - - rather, you click an “Add” link to add it to the sidebar… and only THEN can you drag it around to re-organized the sidebar. The Sidebars in the Widget panel, right NOW, have labels on them - - and you can use the functions.php to change the label to “Left Sidebar”, “Right Sidebar”, etc, etc - hopefully that remains the case when 2.5 comes out and the labels I assign in the functions.php will show up in the drop down menu on the Widgets page. Havent’ played with this yet…. I suspect it will work that way, though.

Theme Editor
So far, it doesn’t look like the Theme Editor has changed much:

Tag Manager
Happily - they’ve built a Tag Manager into this upcoming release. Currently, WordPress 2.3.x has tags and that was a great addition to the platform… unfortunately, there is no easy way to manage those tags without dipping into the database, and not every user is willing, or able, to do that. Expect the ability to manage those tags with 2.5:

Gravatar Support
As reported on this blog, and others, Automattic recently acquired Gravatar and it looks like WordPress 2.5 is going to come with built-in Gravatar support. Does this mean no more Gravatar plugins? Unsure.. but it seems so:

Although, if that is the case with Gravatars - - it would be nice to see some form of integration in the User Profile area, but so far, there’s not:

Although, a very nice addition to the User Profile page is the Password area… WordPress will let you know if your Password is strong, or weak:

Here’s a wishlist item: Password generator that generates a random, strong password. Although, remembering said password is usually tough.

The End.

That’s my review for the moment. I’m not loving the new design - but I’m sure it will grow on me. I am also looking forward to the end result - - when all is said and done, I’m hopeful that I will fall in love with the new design of the Admininstration panel. Right now, it somewhat reminds me of what Blogger used to be in the beginning…. and, in someways, it almost feels like its’ headed in the direction that MT4 currently is right now (though, MT4’s panel design is more sophisticated than this beta version of WP - at the moment) - I think that has to do, primarily, with the color scheme of choice and the way the top menu/tabs are arranged.

I do worry about users who are already complaining to me about “WordPress Fatigue” - in reference to the amount of updates and upgrades they have to perform on a pretty regular basis. I’ve had quite a few clients make the move from WordPress to Movable Type for just that reason alone. As WordPress becomes more and more popular with bloggers and website owners - people are beginning to realize how much maintainance WordPress really does require. Not all users are so technical and want to keep up with such fast-paced development. It’s not just the upgrades - - but it’s the adjustments after the upgrades, as well. Adjustments to template tags, adjustments to plugins and just plain old adjustments to the ol’ learning curve. These upcoming changes to the admin panel are likely to throw some of those users into a tizzy just trying to figure out where everything is….just as soon as they’ve begun to figure it out with the latest version.

I had a client comment “I’ve been using WordPress for a year now - - it was bragged to me as ‘user friendly’ and it is - - once you have it running. USING it is no problem… keeping it running with upgrades to the software, the template tags and plugins is a whole thing altogether. I thought WordPress eliminated my need for a webmaster… but I’m finding that not to be the case. I need one just to keep me up to date. WordPress makes my head spin.”

I can see validity to that constructive criticism.

However, I can also say that WordPress is progressing and developing into a REAL content management system to be reckoned with (ok - it already is) - - ongoing progress and improvement will only enhance the user experience.. that goes for end users of the software… and users/readers of the sites powered by WordPress.

Growing pains sometimes are just that - - painful. You either grow with the flow, or stagnate - - and I admire WordPress for taking on the challenge to grow and continue developing and building one awesome platform.

***NOTE*** I cannot emphasize enough that the design of the WordPress Administration Panel for 2.5 is not done yet. They are still tweaking, pulling and wrangling it into shape — this post was written based on WordPress 2.4-bleeding build as of February 12, 2008. I wrote this post as a preview of what is to come… but it is, by no means, a done deal. By the time WordPress 2.5 is released - the WordPress Administration Panel may look completely different than what I have presented here. I write this review from the standpoint of an end user - - I’m no expert or code jockey..as much as I would love to be