Is The New WordPress 2.5 Holding Up to The Hype?

I’ve watched with interest on the development of the latest WordPress version 2.5. The tension and anticipation has been built up over the last few month and I have to give credit to the guys over at development. They certainly know how to keep us on our toes.

But now that the curtain has been well and truly drawn and bloggers have started to play with their new bubble wrap, the ugly truth seems to surface and I don’t think you are going to like it either.

Personally I have held off in downloading the latest version for good reasons. Firstly, there are always issues when a new software is released and no matter how hard the developers try, they can rarely get it 100% right straight up.

I haven’t got the time to stuff around with my WordPress theme, just because there are some bugs to iron out. So I decided to wait and watch.

What I found is making me seriously question the upgrade.

Widgets annoyance

Right now, I don’t think I will upgrade too soon. I have heard nothing but complaints and aggravation over seemingly unnecessary changes.

For example, the new widget system is way more complicated and will need a 3 step approach to get your widgets on the blog. Gone are the days of drag and drop and I wonder what the heck prompted the guys at WordPress to fix something that was working perfectly before?

As you can see from the screen shot below, that is the widgets how we have come to know and love them.

Now watch below how complicated it is now to add your widgets.

Custom Login Screen

With the new version you can also create a custom login screen. For a great tutorial on doing this you can visit Just Creative Design. Below is an image of their custom built login screen. The only reason I can see this being fun and worth your time is if you have a lot of contributors to your blog anyway.

Media Centre

Another thing I’ve noticed was how time consuming it is now to upload images or other media into your WordPress 2.5 admin. Gone is the simple upload and browse function and I really don’t get the new over complicated version.

Being an existing huge WordPress fan, I’m starting to wonder where this might actually lead. To be honest I’m slightly worried on whether this is the beginning of the end of WordPress and I would love to know why the designers have felt it necessary to annoy thousands of loyal WordPress users by changing things that didn’t need changing.

All in all, this is what I have come in contact with while blogging on a blog that uses the new WordPress 2.5 version and I’m not impressed right now.