crn-web

WordPress has reached version 2.5 (WordPress is the GPL OpenSource software used by bloggers), and I have dutifully applied the upgrade to this blog.

Mostly it has been painless and the improvements are many. Obviously there are quite a few niggles (can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs etc….), so I thought I would do a bit of a roundup for everyone who stops by.

Positives

1. The new interface is much cleaner and seems to be much quicker to update.
2. The top admin menu is MUCH improved and has a much more logical layout
3. TinyMCE advanced is now integrated properly (rather than being a plugin) and apparently this has resolved many issues around it breaking code (although it never seemed to touch mine so I guess I was using basic code!)
4. The vast majority of the admin interface colour scheme is MUCH easier to live with!
5. A lot of unnecessary stuff is hidden away and then slides into view when you need it - rather than always being there or requiring a full screen refresh
6. Options for the writing of posts are much easier to access than previously and are divided up so that there are advanced options - which makes me feel special when I use them
7. Putting pictures and multi-media into posts has been made much more straightforward (although has now created some ‘fixing’ that I need to do - but more of that in negatives!)
8. The addition of ‘few clicks’ install/upgrades for plugin updates should make life easier (although I have yet to use that - and I remain unconvinced!)
9. The dashboard now has a series of widgets which present you with a bunch of information as soon as you login - which is nice (and apparently is customizable - although there does not seem to be much info as to how)
10. The upgrade itself is an absolute piece of cake (takes more than 5mins though) PROVIDED you follow the instructions. If you follow the upgrade instructions that are here, then it will be painless. Please don’t be tempted to use someone else’s as that is when things will go wrong. (for example I just read a blog that had 10 steps and missed out the critical step of going to the upgrade URL to reconfigure your SQL data base. That is probably why that guy’s blog has broken…)
11. Things just feel more ‘to hand’. Don’t get me wrong - after the last lot of upgrades that I have done here I was somewhat perturbed when all of a sudden my interface looked VERY different and it took a few minutes of playing to find everything. The learning curve for that is much reduced over learning the last interface though - so I am much pleased….
12. The option to save a post midway through creation is a boon. Sure - you could have auto save in 2.3.3 - but I like the reassuring feeling of hitting the ‘Save’ button so that I know that it is done (oh and 2.5 still auto saves as well - just to be sure )
13. I can now edit my permalink before it becomes finalised. This is something that has always irritated me, (only ever caused me a real problem once so I was grumbling about nothing really). Now I can simply click and rewrite the permalink to whatever I choose and this is entirely irrespective of the permalink schema that has been previously selected - ah the control!
14. Most of my plugins still work (with the odd niggle) and there is a full list of what I have still in place and/or turned off or doesn’t work at the end of this post.
15. My Blog still works!

Negatives

1. I have no idea who at WordPress HQ likes red - but please stop using it in my interfaces! I keep thinking that there is a problem when I login…

   

2. This upgrade could prove challenging to anyone who has auto installed this software from a cPanel login, and the only advice offered for that by WordPress HQ is to pay someone else to do it - which is not practical for many bloggers who are not in it for the cash.
3. I have lost some of the options for managing my images. Previously in tinyMCE Advanced (as a plugin) I could control how an image looked - its’ links etc etc. Links have been separated from the image again which now means a visit to two popup menus to do what I need to. Also my image classes do not appear to have transferred so I am back to manually adding the padding - which is a PITA
4. Supposedly there is a button to make the editor full screen (I had this in tinyMCE Advanced), but I’ll be blowed if I can find it….
5. The documentation for the features of 2.5 is either non-existent, impossibly tough to find, or features are mentioned with no indication of where to find them - mildly frustrating.
6. I have lost my simpletags plugin and so now have to come up with the tags rather than have them suggested to me (apparently this suggested tags is an inbuilt 2.5 feature - but again, I cannot find it)
7. The login customisations that some companies will have made will now be missing after upgrade, which will be annoying for them as it appears that there is no plugin to change this yet.
8. My CSS classes are no longer available to me in the editor
9. My tables are missing from the editor (that is not true tables - just content tables so that everything easily lines up - and yes I am sure purists will scoff, but I write and am far too lazy to code that stuff!)
10. When I insert flv video it works on the front page and not on single post pages which is a MAJOR PITA! I am fairly sure this is a relative link issue - but where to find it? Glad I am not doing a video blog…

To be honest that is about it. Sure I could keep moaning about the fact that I cannot instantly lay my mouse cursor on a feature or button - but that is mostly a lack of familiarity and I am sure I will be back up to speed pretty soon. No - it’s all pretty tidy thank you!

PLUGINS

1. adsense injection - I had already turned this off a while back as it constantly put the ads over images and text, and the attitude of the plugin writer (based on his own description of his plugin) makes me think it isn’t worth asking him about it.
2. adsense target - nice plugin that simply wraps the content with appropriate adsense targeting info, so that you (the reader) get adverts that are relevant to what you are reading. Works just fine after upgrade.
3. akismet - you would hope that WordPress’ adopted spam filter would work in their new and shiny version of the software, and I am pleased to announce that it does.
4. all in one SEO pack - appears to be working, although I have to say that I have not paid much in the way of attention to it (other than randomly updating it) for the last few months.
5. anarchy media player - definitely seems to conflict with the WordPress player - but the WordPress player is not working properly either. Anarchy is now (reluctantly) turned off.
6. AskApache Google 404 - great little plugin this, which I am really chuffed to say is working seamlessly with its’ shiny new partner (WP 2.5). This plugin simply enhances my error pages so that they are considerably more useful than normal.
7. Buy me a beer - this plugin is what generates the little link under each post asking if you would like to buy me a coffee (not really a beer fan!). Links directly to PayPal and seems to have worked much better under WP 2.5 as I can now (easily) choose which post it appears in so can remove a link if I think that post is not appropriate for my begging!
8. Configurable Tag Cloud - I have not had this plugin turned on for ages, and to be honest I have no idea if it would work with WP 2.5
9. Cronless postie - At the moment I do not know if this works with 2.5, but I am using it actively on 3 other blogs where the contributors are not comfortable logging in and prefer to do their blogging by email. Until I can be sure about this plugin I wont be upgrading those blogs to 2.5
10. dagon design sitemap generator - a brilliant plugin which I am delighted to say is still a brilliant plugin in WP 2.5. It creates an HTML version of the sitemap so that people can view it as well as the search engines.
11. Disqus comment system - whilst this plugin is working just fine, and seems 100% compatible with WP 2.5, I am not convinced (yet) about this plugin. Essentially it means that all of your comments are hosted off site (and they handle the SPAM filtering) which is fine, and means there are other places linking back to you, but I am not sure that it hasn’t slowed my comments down. I will leave it where it is for a while and take a view later on.
12. Dofollow trackbacks - I’ve turned this one on to share the link-love, remains compatible with WP 2.5, but to be honest if I was not so lazy I could do this manually.
13. Dropcap first character - this is a styling plugin that I use simply because my changes to the CSS files had inconsistent results, and whilst searching for the reason for that I tripped over this plugin. Works perfectly in WP 2.5
14. Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator - Like 10. above this is a brilliant plugin that remains brilliant in WP 2.5. It creates (and dynamically updates) a sitemap suitable for Google and Yahoo (and any spider that will be directed by htaccess to the sitemap.xml or sitemap.xml.gz files). I am sure this has contributed to my posts hitting Google inside the hour.
15. Gregarious - Unfortunately I really liked this plugin which inserted a bunch of options for people to social network the post that they were looking at. The reason that is unfortunate is that the plugin is not compatible with WP 2.5 and the author has no expectation of changing this.
16. Increase sociability - this is quite an interesting plugin that essentially welcomes visitors from Digg or Stumbleupon with their own custom welcome message. Works just fine in WP 2.5
17. Maxblogpress favicon - this is another plugin that I use because I am lazy. Essentially, it makes the little picture appear in the address bar. I have not linked this one, simply because registration is required to make the plugin work and then you get endless spam emails. If you want it you can find it by searching google.
18. MyPage order - there were reports of people not being able to get this to work in WP 2.5, which made me rush to check that mine was okay. It is working perfectly and means that I can set the order of static pages simply by dragging and dropping.
19. Permalink redirect - this neat plugin makes sure that any attempt to view a post is always routed via the permalink - so that way if you change your permalink structure for any reason, you wont end up with any dead links. Works perfectly in WP 2.5
20. Secure and accessible PHP contact form - this plugin is simply the best (in my opinion) contact form out there. Easy to configure and looks great (wide choice of CSS styles, or if you really want to you can configure your own). Works just fine in WP 2.5
21. Simple tags - I really liked this plugin. To be honest it was the suggestions for keywords from Yahoo and Tag the Net that I liked best. Sadly it is not compatible with the new tagging system in WP 2.5 although the author promises an update - so fingers crossed!
22. TinyMCE advanced - this plugin allowed me many more options in the WYSIWYG editor in WP. It has been fully integrated into WP 2.5, but to be honest I cannot find a lot of my old settings to configure and there appears to be little intel on where/how to make these customisations. As a plugin it is redundant (and not compatible) but I miss my old settings!
23. Wordpress.com stats - stats plugin that makes wordpress do the hard work collecting your blog stats (and so keeps the difficulty of analysis down to a minimum by integrating it into the dashboard). Seamless move into WP 2.5 as expected.
24. WP-Relative date - simple plugin that modifies the appearance of the date and time to show how long since the last visit that the post was created. Works great with WP 2.5
25. WP Fancy Zoom - my favourite plugin of all! Despite the fact that all it does is turn image links into pretty zoomed images with captions it rocks! The transition from 2.3 to 2.5 was without a glitch. Brilliant!
26. WP Super Cache - this is the plugin that we all hope that we will desperately need! Essentially it can DIGG proof your blog (should you ever hit the front page of Digg) by using some clever compression and cacheing techniques. Sadly I haven’t needed it so far, but it is reassuring to note that it works just fine in WP 2.5

So, that is my somewhat lengthy roundup of the transition of this blog to WP 2.5 - I hope a few of you find it useful!

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• Buy me a Beer - A Wordpress Widget Review (0)
• Oh smashing, Greenpeace are at it again… (0)
• MaxBlogPress Favicon - WordPress Plugin Review (0)

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