I don’t like the way 2.5 is going

I am in agreement concerning the Admin. It is a huge waste of space…very poorly implemented and a giant step backwards in my opinion. Why so much wasted space? Why is everything so BIG? It’s as if the Admin was being designed for people with failing eyesight and made super large for them to see.

I can live with it, and I do like some of the improvements, but there are some parts I don’t really like.

On a realated note: In WP 2.5, there is a huge emphasis on changing themes vs. editing themes. There is a huge CHANGE THEME button on the *dashboard*. Why? Changing your theme shouldn’t be a commonly used function. Editing is more frequently done, and only newbies change their theme every month.

I have to agree.
Lets see:

1. All this space and HUGE fonts.
   Please ask your designer to use a 1200x or 1400x res monitor ??
2. “Write” – do we really need ~280 px of vertical space before the Title field?
3. Write – > “Post” please move “Categories” to right side column, above “Publish Status”. Why is it a good idea to scroll a half a mile just to look for a categories at the bottom of the “huge” admin page?
4. Write – > “Page” same as write. “Page Template” way to far away.
5. Write -> “Links”? sound a bit strange? I’ll “Manage” the links ??
6. Manage-> “Media Library” page is missing a “Upload Media” button?
7. Settings -> “Permalinks” How about a option “Name based ONLY for pages” ?
8. Users: What happend to user ID and can we please have the option for sorting by the column?

What I really miss in this version and it is for me a definitive no-go is that I can’t find anywhere the post and page nicename fields.

Actually, you have to save the post to the the field for the permalink, and here you can modify your slug.

Two steps instead of one.

Just loaded the current SVN version on my test site. So far it looks ok in the admin area. I think where some are commenting about the wasted space is because the window is larger than 1024. As for the fonts well they look a little odd having both the large (good for high resolutions resolution) and tiny fonts in the upper right. Definatly need to “theme” this out to correct it. My theme from version 2.3 seems to work so far.

The new widget control page is a HUGE step backwards. Drag and drop function is gone. Multiple sidebars are organized in a drop down box. A DROP DOWN BOX? What is this, 1998?

i share the concern with the way 2.5 is going. i don’t like the administration panel, i dont like the write page and the waste of space, and i’m very nervous about breaking the 20+ plugins i have running on my site.

the admin stuff doesnt’ need to be ‘web 2.0’. it needs to be functional, fast, and above all, make changes in baby steps to ensure they work and can be digested by the community.

i applaud all the programmers who work on this with little monetary incentive, but i think they’re going to see very light downloads for the 2.5 release because of all the people out there who are just very turned off to the pre-releases we’ve seen.

The single drop down box for widgets is a major pain in the butt. I tried using it on a test blog of mine and it is near impossible to move widgets around to test placement and content.

With drag and drop capability plus the ability for multiple sidebars, in the widget control area, functionality would increase. Maybe I’m being picky.

I just won’t use WordPress without drag-and-drop.

Geez… I’m looking everyday at Chris Johnston’s WP 2.5 Admin Demo (https://wp.chrisjohnston.org/) and I see next step backwards…

Why admins changed this nice, light-blue header of the dashboard to dark, gloomy blue?! Admin page became unreadable and marking of the chosen page to edit (for example here: https://wp.chrisjohnston.org/wp-admin/theme-editor.php) is a dream of a madman. Who will manage to read so small orange font on a dark blue background? :/

I think a lot of these issues could be solved by implementing admin themes. Even if it’s not made easy for millions of people to write the themes, I think it would please more people. Have a few different color schemes, and especially a very simplistic theme for those of us who simply want a “functional” admin interface.

I think the developers will face difficulty pleasing people with admin changes, because even in the few opinions expressed on this thread, I’ve seen desires from wanting it less showy and more simplistic, to those who want better drag-and-drop support (very UN-simple).

With drag and drop capability plus the ability for multiple sidebars, in the widget control area, functionality would increase. Maybe I’m being picky.

You’re definitely not being picky. And I haven’t heard any response for WHY this functionality was removed in 2.5. Seems ridiculous.

I agree, Bryan. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Add to it and clarify it and make it cleaner, simpler, more intuitive. I suspect some of this was just change for change’s sake. If so, that’s not the right path to be going down.

WP has become so popular that everyone is using it. And not everyone is going to be able to figure a lot of this out without digging, flooding the forum with questions like how do I, where is, etc., etc., etc.

WP 2.5’s “new” dashboard? The answer to a question no one asked, IMHO.

For all the guys/girls complaining about the admin interface, why don’t you try out the excellent ‘Fluency Admin for WP 2.5’?

It’s available here: Fluency Admin for WP 2.5

For what it’s worth, in my opinion it’s what the 2.5 admin panel SHOULD have been. Who knows, given some time, it might well do in some form.

I’m using it now on my 2.5 install and it works perfectly.

I think I missed the 2.4 revolution so far, but it’s good to see things moving… I just wish I could keep up ??

My 12 peneth – I can ramble, apologies in advance ??

Widgets – UN-simple yep ok, but it was there and it worked… very well. While I don’t tend to tweak widgets very often the drag and drop made is really easy for end users to adjust things.

The posts page… man what happened… with plugins, (podpress for example) you can currently scroll for miles for some of the unimportant stuff, now you gotta scroll for miles anyhow for important stuff – categories, pings and comments eek – and no drag and drop. My grievance here is that when writing posts, I’m used to word processors and “applications”. the most important part of the “write a blog entry” process is the content and the editor. What you can do to the post is really a sub task. Please put the right hand side stuff back ?? If you can make plugin “additions” appear on the right as well, you’re onto a winner ?? (at least the sections fold up though)

The media library functionality looks to have moved forward, although the demo site doesn’t have any images to play with so I can’t tell about image sizing, thumbnailing, links etc… oh, and to break it, just click “add to post” with nothing there ??

I’m divided on the functional/fancy war. My personal blog – definately functional however I manage some 26 blogs for clients that activly manage their own content, they are end users and appreciate the fluffyness on what we would see as the back end.

The ability to CSS up the back end is awesome. Fluency is neat, but too dark… I think the idea is great though, wordpress the application, with menus and stuff. Mind you it could go all M$ orafice 2007 if you’re not carefull, and even after 3 months of using that I still struggle to find what I need.

WordPress IS the best blogging platform out there, and with one of the strongest plugin facilities I have seen it is close to being the best platform out there. The developers are doing a great job, and they generally tend to listen to the community. The fact that they have released an alpha, 2 minors ahead of the current stable release is testament to that.