CMS Advise

At first glance, WordPress 2.5 admin panel immediately introduces you to it’s new best friend: orange. The famous WP blue has been comforting us for years now and the folks at Happy Cog obviously had their color wheel handy.

The dashboard may catch you a bit off guard as it now sports a dark gray global sub header that will help you if you get lost. Wordpress now feeds it’s new plugin repository directly to your dashboard, boasting the most popular.

The new Write a post page features a stunning new interface. Most notable, the sidebar has been minimized and all options follow the flow of the post in the primary content area.

The TinyMCE editor has been revamped with new icons and an AMAZING new media upload interface. This has major implications for those who are podcasting or video blogging. As a developer, this is probably the most exciting to me.

One last exciting feature is the inclusion of Widgets in the newly named Design view. Here you will find theme information and a management view for multiple widgets.
Wordpress in my opinion has finally evolved to a level that their userbase has demanded and Happy Cog has pulled out all of the stops in the process.

Look for the official release sometime in the coming week.

BONUS!

I’ve setup a demo account for those who want to test out WP 2.5 the Release Candidate without installing it on their servers. Login here using user:tester, password: tester