It’s official, WordPress 2.5 has been released on the world and I got a chance to get my first look and feel of it when I upgraded one of my sites. I thought I would share with you the process of upgrading your site to Wordpress 2.5 and also 5 reasons why I made the switch and why you should do yourself a favor and upgrade.

First thing is first, MAKE SURE YOU BACK UP YOUR SITE. If you need a hand with backing up your Wordpress Site then have a read of this.

Next Thing you will need to do is make a note of what plugins you have Activated and then De Activate them all. Then delete these 2 folders wp-admin and wp-includes. Then copy the new files up to your server making sure you overwrite the old ones. The other file that you might want to get a copy of is wp-config.php just in case. This is the file that holds all your database connection settings.

Now that you have upgraded the files it is time to visit the upgrade page that you will find at the following URL http://yourdomain/wp-admin/upgrade.php - That’s It all upgraded. Why should you do all this?

1. New User Administration Interface

This is a massive change from previous versions and I must say I love the new look. Jefferey Zeldman and the team at Happy Cog Studios have done a magnificent job here. Even if this was the only improvement it would be worth the Upgrade.

2. The Dashboard has been Overhauled
The colors will be the first thing you notice once you login, but the next thing you will notice is the New and improved dashboard. It is now very nicely modularized and easy to navigate. I love the way that the important things are right there in your face.

3. New Menu Layout
Now what is good here is that, for me anyway I need quick access to the following areas writing posts, managing posts, managing comments, and managing design elements and the new Menu Layout in WordPress 2.5 does just that with those elements on the Main Nav on the left hand side. Nice!!! You will also notice that the Presentation menu has been renamed Design. Apparently this was a useability decision. The following items have been moved to the secondary nav on the right hand side Plugins, Options (now Settings) and Users.

4. Improvements to the Visual Editor
Although I hardly ever use the Visual Editor there are a lot of people that do. The new one now supports TinyMCE3. It also now includes a pretty cool Full Screen mode.

5. Image Uploader Overhaul
Now If you use a lot of images in your site, posts, pages etc which I do on the particular site that I upgraded (one of the reasons that I wanted to upgrade) then you will love this. You can now upload and insert multiple images at once via a new Flash-based up loader GOLD!!! Watch out though if Flash in not installed then it will revert back to the old image up loader.

In summing up, I would recommend you do this upgrade as it is well worth the 10 minutes it takes. I am really impressed with the new release. If you need a hand with an upgrade then shoot me an email and I would be glad to help out.

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