As the Wordpress puts it, “The boys at Wordpress have finally lifted the curtains on the newest version of the world’s best blogging software. You can find more information about it at the Wordpress blog.

WordPress 2.5, the culmination of six months of work by the WordPress community, people just like you. The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages.”

To be honest this version 2.5 is miles ahead than its own predecessor versions or any other CMS publishing  platform. Before the upgrade I was somewhat skeptical to go ahead, fearing the worst any blogger can imagine! However, ten minutes was exactly that it took me to get my blog updated to this version 2.5.

The upgrade itself is a breeze, given you remember the universal rule to backup your entire site every now and then, especially before any upgrades. Also take care to protect your wp-content directory housing all your plugins and themes etc. If you over-write it accidentally all of the stuff will be history. There were a few minor issues like my ad-units going blank. The units were there – but without any code in them! So I had to track all the relevant code and put it back again in its place.

Also the sidebar widgets are reset to original positions and you have to again place them in a corner you deem fit. Over and above these small distractions Wordpress 2.5 is a breath of fresh air and offers a much cleaner, faster, and crisp dashboard. The dashboard has been transformed into what it should be – a real info pack. It now consists of widgets and shows you fantastic stats about your blog, posts comments, inbound links as well as plugin details and much more not leaving out the good old  WordPress news.

The dashboard widgets can be customised as per your desire to reflect your taste and preferences. File uploading features have also been improved rather built from scratch. Previously uploading a large file was an exercise in itself now you can select a folder with a bunch of images in one go and it’ll show you the progress of each upload. There are many more details to mention but it would take forever to get down to the  nitty gritty. Although I would mention briefly some bits and pieces for your continued interest and as a persuasion to opt for the free upgrade:

  • Search posts and pages: Search now includes pages too,  in addition to posts.
  • Tag management: Add, rename, delete, and do whatever else you like to tags from inside WordPress, no plugins needed.
  • Password strength meter: Changing your password on your profile prompts Wordpress 2.5  to display you how strong your password is.
  • Concurrent user editing: Have you ever been on a blog with multiple authors editing the same area? It can wreck hours of hard labour. Now if you open a post that someone else is editing, WordPress will lock it out, preventing you or any one else from saving until the first person is done.
  • Plugin upgrades from within: Since Wordpress 2.3 we’ve been told you when there is an update available. Now it is done at the click of a mouse, the update is downloaded and installed!
  • Visually improved post editor: Version 2.5 utilises version 3.0 of TinyMCE, which means better compatibility with Safari, and integraties better with complex HTML.
  • Built-in galleries: Now this is one of the greatest features of this upgrade, essentially ridding you of all those gallery plugins.  When you take advantage of multi-file upload to upload a bunch of photos, a new shortcode lets you to easily embed galleries by just putting in your post. It will display all your thumbnails and captions and each will link each to a page where people can comment on the individual photos.
  • Secured cookies: Cookies are now encrypted based on the protocol which is something like user name|expiration time|HMAC( user name|expiration time, k) where k = HMAC(user name|expiration time, sk) and where sk is a secret key, which you can define in your config.
  • Database optimization: The table layout has not been changed in this release, which is one of the reasons so many plugins work fine with 2.5. They have added a few new indicies and made a few default fields more flexible based on some bottlenecks that were found on WordPress.com, which now hosts more than 2.7 million WordPress blogs. It should be invisible to the application, just a bit faster on the database side.
  • New media buttons: New Add Media buttons above the post are both expandable, and can be overridden.
  • Shortcode API: The new gallery functionality is powered by the new shortcode API. Shortcodes are little bracket-delineated strings that can be magically expanded at runtime to something more interesting. They give users a short, easy to type and copy/paste string they can move around their post without worrying about messing up complex HTML or embed codes.

Okay here you can watch the original Screencast from Wordpress.com for your ease and convenience:

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

About the author:
Bob Ratiyal is a successful entrepreneur with over 15 years home based business experience in Internet Information Marketing, Blogs, Software & IT. Visit his website www.bestonlinefinds.com for the best money making opportunities on the net.