At first glance this seems like a step backwards, but I came across a post called “In defense of the WordPress 2.5 widget panel” that makes a very good point:

I want you to imagine being able to widgetize anything easily. Now, imagine 50 different widget blocks in the old widget admin panel. Could get messy, right? The new widgets section gives you a drop-down list of your widgetized areas, which sets no limits on how you use your blog.

[With WordPress 2.5] you can make widgets for anything and everything.

Want to widgetize your footer? Done. The Cat Photos category sidebar? Done. About page sidebar? Post attachment sidebar? Done and done.

In summary, this new widget administration panel makes it easier to maintain an extensive list of “sidebars” (which, as the post points out, could also include the footer, for example). As theme authors start taking advantage of this, WordPress users will have much more fine-grained control over the appearance of their site, without having to edit the theme code.

I guess it’s one of those simplicity-for-functionality trade-offs. And in this case, the new functionality looks very promising.

A major upgrade, WordPress 2.5 packs a boatload of new features. Here are many that were listed in the official announcement at the WordPress Development Blog:

• Customizable Dashboard widgets
• The ability to upload multiple files at once
• EXIF data extraction from image files
• Search functionality for pages in addition to posts
• Tag management functionality
• A password strength meter
• Concurrent post editing protection
• Automated plugin updating
• An improved visual editor
• Built-in gallery support

These security enhancements are also included:

• Salted passwords (to guard against brute-force password guessing)
• Encrypted cookies
• A new function for WordPress developers designed to avoid SQL injection attacks

The 2.5 update has developer features for WordPress programmers like myself, such as taxonomy creation, a new Shortcode API, and increased inline code documentation.

As if the above features mentioned in WordPress’s official announcement weren’t enough, 2.5 includes even more enhancements:

• An overhauled administration interface.

• Built-in avatar support using Gravatar.

• Full text feeds even when the <!–more–> tag is used.

• Two default color schemes for the admin interface; additional skins can be added via plugins.

• A “comment bubble” in the admin menu that tells you at-a-glance how many comments are awaiting moderation.

Looking at the above features list, it appears WordPress 2.5 will be obsoleting the following plugins:

• Full Text Feed
• Existing gallery plugins like the excellent NextGEN Gallery (of course, these plugins can still have a use if you don’t care for WordPress’s built-in gallery)

WordPress 2.5 also takes care of these fixes that I included in my WordPress Tweaks plugin:

• Changing the “Blogroll” admin section back to “Links”
• Adding the “current_page_item” CSS class on a static page used for posts [bug ticket]

If you’re curious, you can also check out 2.5′s entire list of 734 recorded changes and fixes, or check out some interesting WordPress 2.5 statistics.

WordPress 2.5 has a ton of new features, but also has some changes that some people consider feature regression:

• The categories section has been moved below the post editor on the “Write Post” page. (Although some are very annoyed by this, I personally don’t see it as much of an issue. Yes, it may necessitate a bit of extra scrolling, but how often do we need to set the categories when writing a post? Once, maybe twice?)

• No more drag-and-drop sidebar assembly. You need to click an “Add” link instead.

• The new color scheme will certainly not meet the approval of some. (Give them a break; it’s hard to find colors that please everyone. We’ll get used to it. And as mentioned above, 2.5 allows the admin interface to be customized with color schemes.)

There’s a lot of changes coming with WordPress’s latest version. What’s your take? What changes are you excited about, or disappointed with? Will you be upgrading right away, or will you wait a while?

The post also featured a link to download WordPress 2.5 Release Candidate 1 (the term “release candidate” means that the software is mature enough to be released as-is, but the developers want more feedback before the final release).

We should be seeing the final WordPress 2.5 in a couple of days!

The release date for WordPress 2.5 is March 10! Here’s a sneak-peak of some of the planned features:

• New admin interface — An overhaul of the one we’ve had since version 2.0. The new one looks sort of like a cross between the version 2.0 blue interface and ye olde version 1.5 gray scheme.

• Widget-Based Dashboard — Finally, Dashboard-editing support!

• Built-in avatar support — Using Automattic‘s own Gravatar service, of course.

• Tag Management — Now there will be an admin interface for managing your blog’s tags, presumably similar to the one for managing categories.

• Full Text Feeds — “By popular demand, feeds now include the content after the ‘more’ tag when full text feeds are selected.”

• Automatic Plugin Upgrade — Whoopee! Now if we could just have WordPress update itself automatically too (without the need for extra plugins), we’d be in great shape.

Looking good! A big thanks to all the volunteers who make WordPress possible!