Realespace

Wordpress 2.5 was released a day ago complete with a new admin theme (Similar to Wordpress.org) which tries to simplify the admin section and let the blog owner “just write”. I really like the backend, and especially the new theme widget section. The presentation section has been renamed to Design but other then that it looks the same.

They also removed one of the most annoying bugs since wordpress became a true content manager. This was the CSS styling problem with the static pages. Ever since wordpress released the functionality to add a static front page, the navigation menu had a bug in which the static page did not get the proper class tag of current_page_item. If you have a tabbed navigation or any other navigation that displayed differently on active pages, your static page would not work, and look like a non-active page. There were many hacks for this issue, but bottom line it was a pain. Wordpress 2.5 has fixed this bug.

Wordpress has not updated their multi-user product, and will probably not happen for a while since the support is lacking for MU.

Techcrunch covered the release yesterday and many comments stated that Wordpress development is focusing on aspects of the product that are not making it better, while other platforms are. I disagree. I like the new product and the simplicity of the product. Wordpress started as a simple blog tool and and added a simple CMS option (Static pages) and dominated more impressive CMS platforms like Mambo and Joomla. Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer seems to be focused on bringing more media options to Wordpress. He takes many photos, so it is not a surprise that one of the biggest features to Wordpress 2.5 is the image gallery.

Another very cool feature is the automatic plugin updater. Not only does it notify you when a plugin has a new release but will upgrade in one click.

All Wordpress 2.5 features and improvements

Download Wordpress 2.5