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Wordpress 2.5 finally launched after a few delays, and it hasn’t disappointed. I was glad to see them concentrating on revamping the Dashboard and the general Admin area. Wordpress has proven itself to be a solid extensible platform, but their admin area lacked in usability and flexibility.

The upgrade process was a snap thanks to this guide. The whole process took about 20 mins (backup, downloading the new version, overwriting, setting up plugins, and tweaking the template). Luckily, none of the plugins I use had any problems (including the Actionstreams plugin).

Here’s what I like about this release:

• Visual Editor: The interface is less cluttered and slick. The full-screen version rocks.
• Tags: Even though they were introduced as a core functionality in a previous release, they weren’t really usable until the new AJAXy version came along in this release.
• Widget-based dashboard: Now plugins can use the Dashboard screen real-estate for administrative information like the WP Stats widget.
• Lightweight UI: The UI looks more current than the previous ‘99 style. It looks more customizable, so I’m hoping for a outbreak of WP Admin themes (like the useful Fluency theme).
• Related section: In most admin pages, there is a nifty new section titled simply “Related”. It has a list of links that are related to the current page (writing a post, editing categories, managing comments, etc.)
• Multi-file uploading (with progress bar): It’s very similar to the Flickr uploader. Its intuitive, easy and just works.
• Built-in galleries: Though I’m not sure if I’ll ever use this, its good to know that I could roll out my own gallery instead of having to install another app. Amazingly, you only need to include the text in your post to turn it into a gallery (complete with navigation).

I highly recommend watching the 4-min screencast by Matt Mullenweg about the new Dashboard and Editor features.

For the curious, no additional tweaks were needed for the Grid Focus theme (the one used on my blog) to work in WP 2.5.

Download Wordpress 2.5 here.