They say there’s nothing like a first impression, so after writing a post about things to consider before updating your wordpress version, I decided to do the exact opposite of what I usually do : to upgrade my Wordpress version a very short time after the new version release.

As most Wordpress users know, version 2.5 a much anticipated release. Even Wordpress.org has undergone a design change, which strongly emphasizes that version 2.5 is supposed to be milestone.

Exactly because of this reason I am not going to go in depth wordpress 2.5 review which lists all changes and examines advantages and disadvantages, but instead, I will list my overall first impressions of the new system while writing this post . . .

Overall Good Look & Feel

The first thing I did after logging into the wordpress administration was of course scroll up and down the screen in order to look at the new design that that’s there. Not having looked at screen shots of 2.5 before updating I can say the design has come a long way in comparison to previous versions.

The system looks more professional and has lost what always felt to be a little bit of what I always felt was a little bit of an amateurish feel.

The layout of the dashboard has improved considerably, as now I can see my wordpress.com stats in a little window without having to click through pages before actually reaching there. That’s a welcome improvement.

Quickly clicking through the other options, such as manage, comments and the new media library, reveals that the development team have put emphasis on making this version of Wordpress more user friendly and faster to work with.

Editor and Writing Posts

Entering the editor to write this post, I noticed that drafts don’t appear in the area above the editor after clicking Write anymore.

Instead there is a related menu in the right sidebar where you can click View Drafts. Getting used to this is easy, however I was very accustomed to clicking Write and finding a link to my latest draft above the editor window.

Also, in previous version there where three buttons, which made it harder to accidentally push the publish button while a post wasn’t finished yet. However in wordpress 2.5 you have to take care that you don’t press the publish button accidentally. I accidentally almost published this post 3 times already. I believe most blogger would prefer having these buttons a little further apart from each other.

As far as the editor goes it seems slick and the content area where to type the post is less wide, actually giving it a little bit more of a realistic feel when writing (due to the fact that most blogs aren’t 100% wide).

Overall feeling that I get while writing this post, again, is that I am working in a more professional system than I am used to from earlier versions.

Image Uploads Don’t Work

It took me a minute to find where to upload images. But I quickly found that they’ve placed the add media option above the editor buttons. Opposed to the old upload method, the file selection pop up allows you to select multiple files for upload without installing a batch file upload plugin.

However, I cannot upload an image and I’ve been forced to Google for solutions. Finally I found this wordpress 2.5 can’t upload images solution thread on the wordpress forums. The problem with this is that not every solution works on every server, as apache versions may vary.

After 45 minutes of trying different things I got the image upload to work by fiddling with apache’s security module. I did this by adding some code the .htaccess file that’s stored on the server.

Note : Since I published this post, I’ve received quite a few emails from people asking me how to solve problems that they are facing after updating. It’s hard to know where specific problems come from, but usually has something to do with the configuration Apache (web server), MySQL ( database) or PHP (scripting language) on the web hosting provider.

If you are experiencing problems that you cannot solve and you’ve tried everything, such as emailing your web hosting provider for help, then my advice would be to either downgrade to a previous version of wordpress or to change to a reliable webhosting provider who does provide up to date versions and good customer service.

Other Immediately Apparent Improvements

• Automatic Plugin Update Option.
  I know that many wordpress users hate downloading new plugin versions, unpacking them and then re-uploading the new files in order to have the plugins they use up to date. The first step that wordpress took to make that process easier was to implement code which notifies the user that there’s a new plugin version out. Now, they’ve taken it one step further by adding an an automatic plugin version updater. Very handy and a good time saver.
• Media Library
  Deleting multiple images or files becomes easy as I’m able to see a list if files with check boxes in front of them. Now I am able to select multiple and hit a delete button. Though I know there used to be plug ins in the older versions of wordpress that could add functionality such as this, I really feel that these ways of selecting files should be standard in any CMS.
• Fancy Media Uploader
  While uploading images to your posts used to be a hassle, it now is a much better experience, as I’ve noticed that now I can upload multiple image at once. This again, should be standard functionality without having to add a plug in such as batch upload.

New Widget Handling

The handling of widgets has changed from all sidebars being visible on one screen to having to select which sidebar to view through a drop down menu. Though the design feels consistent with the rest of the system I feel like I’ve lost a bird’s eye view of content elements of my blog.

I have yet to decide if I will dislike this forever. For now I’m not very fond of it.

My 15 minutes are up, so finally,

Even though there is a big shift between this version and previous once l think that wordpress 2.5 is a good step forward in almost every way. This is partly due to the fact that previous versions initially have taken much more from my time when solving problems (I am referring to the upload problem), and also because they didn’t have comfortable options of automatic plugin upgrading, media library and plugin free batch image upload.

Of course there s much more to say about wordpress 2.5, but I basically took only around 15 minutes to make use the new version and get this post done.

So, if you have updated your wordpress version to 2.5 as well, then of course I’m wondering what your first impressions of the new wordpress system are.

Maybe you’ve had an annoying experience ? Maybe you don’t like the changes, or maybe you do ? And why ?