Tech Ravings

With the final release of Wordpress 2.5 I eagerly installed it to test it out an make sure that my plug-ins still worked with it. Touted to have a much improved administration section as well as new features I was completely shocked at the backwards thinking of the new version. Although installation was still easy enough, setting up the upgrade was absolutely horrid when dealing with widgets and the nicely designed look and feel of previous versions was replaced with hard to see colors and overall increase of white-space.

Yes my plug-ins still continued to work as designed but when it I started to add the widgets to the theme it took me 20 minutes to figure out just how to do it. It was easy enough in previous versions to drag the widget into the template column(s) as needed and save them. You had a full display of the column your template provided. Not in 2.5.

 Version 2.5 takes so much more time to re-arrange widgets that was so easy in previous versions. You have a listing of all your available widgets in which you “add.” Here’s the catch though, you add them to the selected column you have chosen to display. In order to add the widget you have to select and then show the column. Confused yet? That’s why it took me a bit to figure it out.

 The upper navigation is really bad. Overall it is a bit larger, including the sub-nav that takes up valuable space for other things. The choice of color for the dashboard link color (grey on black) and at such a small font size, come on I’m not color blind but it’s difficult for even me. Then the larger size fonts for main and sub nav takes up too much room. Granted the previous versions header could have been better but the color contrasts and sizes where fine.

On of my pet peeves about every Wordpress version was the “View Site” link. It never opened in a new tab or window. This really stinks for checking modifications in the admin and previewing them live. Version 2.5 is no different, get used to the back button.

The only thing I do see as a great re-design is the dashboard page. It’s actually cleaner and more organized that the previous versions. The information displayed in each of the blocks doesn’t appear to malform the others as it did in previous versions.

 Over all I am highly un-impressed with 2.5 as it uglier and more difficult to use than the previous versions. While some new functionalities have been added such as media (music, thumbnails, etc) I can say that they will have any benefit. The re-design will effectively cause a new learning curve for existing users, and the poor look a deterrent to new users. I would have rather had the same look with the new features.

Default WordPress widgets provides us “Recent Comments” and “Recent Posts”, while great, it takes up real-estate between the two widgets. They also do not keep our visitors informed of any updates to posts or pages that we make, so some of our updates may be lost to the reader. With any lack of activity of the two visitors may choose not to return to our sites.

The Recent Activities plug-in combines both the “Recent Comments” and “Recent Posts” widget into one widget thus saving the real-estate on our blogs. It also looks for any updates to a post or page and displays it in the list. Now not only are we saving space but also keeping the visitors informed of new information.

Visitors also re-visit an active site. Using mine, Tech Raving, as an example I may not make an active post for three weeks as work and responsibilities allow me. Doesn’t mean in not active with all the downloads and trackbacks I receive. Recent Activities accounts for this. If you have the new version of Download Counter v1.1 your downloads will be displayed. New user registration to your site is also displayed to encourage visitors to not only register but also return to your site.

You may be asking why I released this as a pre-release status? That is because I am far from done with this plug-in. It is a fully functional WordPress plug-in that you can use solely on your blog. However it is the start of a more “universal widget” (innuendo, if you know what that means you know where I am going). Such that, because you can use it right now on your WordPress blog I wanted to release it.

You’ll have to stay tuned to see the affect of full “Universal” display of your blog activity!

Get it here and check for updates Recent Activities

I have made a new feature change to the Download Counter plugin. When a file is downloaded it is recorded with the date of the download. This allows the plugin to work with a new plugin I am developing at the moment and will be released very soon. This update is only useful for the up-coming plugin, but if you also want to record the historical download information then this update is also needed.