Now powered by WordPress 2.5

2008 March 30

by jhay | with 14,013 views

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Finally! After waiting for so long this blog is now being powered by the awesome newest version of the most popular blogging software out there, WordPress 2.5 which is now available for anyone to download and take their blogging experience to new levels. (naks!)

A short recap of the new features of WP 2.5 has been laid down by Matt on the WP Dev Blog:

“multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages.”

So far, I’m happy and excited by the fresh look and feel of the Dashboard. All in all, I’d say that the inside of WordPress 2.5 has been “web 2.0-ized”. Cool and smooth colors, clean lines and still an elegant look. Blogging with WP 2.5 is a rewarding process in itself! Big kudos to the WP team and the community.

Testing. 1..2..3

Instead of playing with the RC versions of WP 2.5 on my demo blog, I opted to wait until the full version is available and test/play with it right here on The Four-eyed Journal. I’m looking forward to get my hands on the media library and see what it can do to improve my content and blogging experience. I’ll also be on the look out on how other bloggers will harness these new features of WP 2.5

Plugin Issues & Compatibilities

One of the major issues whenever a new version of WP comes out is how it will work with the current set of plugins we use on our blogs. That’s why before the release of a new WP version, we scour the web for lists or guides on Plugin Compatibilities. The most popular and trusted destination is the Plugins/Plugin Compatibility list which keeps the latest info on which plugins will work and won’t work with WordPress 2.5

Fortunately for me, 98% of the plugins that I currently use are compatible with WP 2.5. Even I was surprised by smooth upgrade I went through. Here below is the complete list of all the plugins I currently use which works well with WordPress 2.5

AntiLeech 1.8
Brian’s Threaded Comments 1.5.12
Commentluv 0.999
DoFollow 2.2
flickrRSS 3.2.1
Google Adsense widget 1.0
Google XML Sitemaps 3.0.3
Got Banners 1.0
Maintenance Mode 3.2
Most Commented 1.4
Optimal Title 3.0
Popularity Contest 1.3b3 (with this fix by Blogvaria)
Psychic Search 1.1
Recent Posts 1.07
Related Posts 2.02
Samsarin PHP Widget 1.2
Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form v.2.0WP B20061101
ShareThis Classic 1.5.1
Smart Archives 1.9
Subscribe To Comments 2.1.2
the_excerpt Reloaded R1
Twitter Tools 1.1b1 (it works fine as long as you don’t twit from the sidebar)
WordPress Database Backup 2.1.5
WP-PostViews 1.20
WP Grins 1.5
WP lightbox 2 0.6.3

The two plugins that I have to let go of are Advanced Tag Entry whose functionality has been taken over by WP 2.5’s improved native tagging system and Get Recent Comments which somehow doesn’t work in widgetized sidebar. It wasn’t really a loss as there’s a default widget in WP that provides the same functionality of the said plugin. The removal of these plugins and some more that I no longer use also gave me the chance to clean up my blog’s MySQL database by removing the tables that plugins once used. A lighter database will come in handy when the time comes to yet again switch hosting, but that’s for another post.

Go ahead and grab a download of WordPress 2.5, you don’t know how much you’re missing.