After reading about the release of WordPress 2.5, I quickly downloaded the new version. I have never been one to jump onto the new version bandwagon, but I really wanted to check out the new administrator section. The administrator section, you see, has caused me much grief with it’s use.

Now that I have just completed the upgrade process from WordPress 2.3.2 (I think) to WordPress 2.5 and I must admit that the upgrade was rather painless. WordPress provided multiple options for the upgrade process (a “simple” 3-step process, and an extended process, which I followed). Now that I have WordPress 2.5 installed, I can say that, so far, so good.

My first impressions (keeping in mind that I’ve played with this for a full 7-8 minutes so far) from the outsider’s point of view, there doesn’t seem to be much different from the blog side. The default theme is still the same default theme (nothing wrong with that). However all the sexiness is apparent in the totally redesigned administrator section. Other than getting used to the layout, the interface seems a bit more intuitive. They’ve cut down the extremely crowded navigation bar from about 7-9 to a more manageable 4. One thing that always discouraged me previously were just the sheer amount of options I had in the admin section. I had finally started getting used to it, then 2.5 comes out and fixes the problem I’ve had with it.

Other changes so far seem to be a long time coming (from what I’ve been reading) however due to my fairly recent escapades into the blogging world, I’m not one to comment about previous vs current aspects of it. But from a more broad point of view, things are a lot more intuitive now. Easy viewing of a item’s publish status is on the right. Change publishing date as well as publish in the future (a feature that, if it were available before, I’ve never seen).

The WordPress staff really turned the extremely clumsy administrator section of old into something that is truly easier and more straight forward to use. And I, for one, thank you for that.