I really don’t like the backend changes in WordPress 2.5. Really, really, really don’t like them. Most of the staff on PhoneNews.com doesn’t either… I’ve been getting an earful about it.
The WordPress team says that they hired an external research team, to determine how people use the backend. Problem is, they weighted experienced and non-experienced users equal, or so it seems. The backend of a WordPress site now reads, and functions, like a blog of its own.
The homepage looks like a blog about your blog. While that’s nice for someone new to online posting and reporting… it’s a dismal mess for the experienced user. I think it’s utter rubbish (I’ve been watching too much BBC, but nevertheless, it’s really bad).
Worse, there are functional limitations. I can no longer sort posts by author. Where did that functionality go? Now I can’t find out if a staffer is lagging in news articles without dredging through everyone else’s articles. Isn’t this what I got away from Joomla for?
TinyMCE 3 is nice, but it looks like they’ve ignored Internet Explorer in testing. I can’t even inject a URL with the visual editor on IE7. I can understand not liking IE, but in a pinch, I shouldn’t be expected to install Firefox or Safari. Hence this post is URL free (I’m writing it from an XP SP3 test system). Update: Most of these are graphical glitches, as I’ve done more testing, but they’re still present.
The good news is, backend modifications are at the top of the list for improvements in both WordPress 2.5.1 and 2.6. Version 2.5.1 will restore some functionality lost, while the focus on 2.6 is to overhaul the backend once again to balance between 2.3’s professional, and 2.5’s novice caterings.
All I can say to WordPress is, hurry.