With some delay Wordpress 2.5 was finally launched yesterday. This is a long waited version and it features lots and lots of new features and even more flexibility.

The whole admin panel got a facelift, good bye old theme, welcome new web 2.0 theme. As you can see the most commonly used features are way more highlighted than the less commonly used features(like plugins for example: you activate the plugins once and you won’t have to use the plugins tab till you upload a new plugin.

The use of widgets also invaded the admin panel! The dashboard contains a series of widgets which you can easily edit.

Along with the new release wordpress achieved a great milestone and wordpress.org also got a facelift. It was about time you guys!

The new wordpress admin panel has some really neat features, but the thing that i like the most is that it’s organized and even more simple to navigate and manage your blog.

The boxes are completely reordered which are like a STEP-BY-STEP guide on how to write your posts.

For example:

- you start with writing the post

- after which you add tags

- you select the categories

- use custom fields

-set commenting/trackback settings

- select author

When writing a post the permalink is generated and shown, which you can edit in real time at a simple push of a button:

You can instantly add and delete tags without reloading the page using the Tags box features:

Adding pictures/videos/audio/media/ is just one click away using the Add Media feature:

Also the WYSIWYG editor got a new look, and the newest feature that i love is the REDO button, because sometimes when i messed up something i pressed Ctrl+Z by reflex and couldn’t redo it

Wordpress 2.5 is truly a revelation. It gives you the flexibility you need and the feeling that your using a very advanced CMS with all the settings at the tip of your fingertips.

Upgrading to wordpress 2.5 won’t really affect your blog, because 2.5 supports themes and plugins made for older versions of wordpress, although as i saw there are a few plugins that are incompatible with 2.5.

Currently i’m at college(damn…some classes are just way too boring), but tomorrow i will try to make a video overview of wordpress 2.5.

Till then here are some helpful links for you:

http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/wordpress-25-brecker/

http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/wordpress-25-rc2/