Nur Ahmad Furlong

Tag: upgrade

  • Impressed with WordPress 3.3 UI changes

    I must admit I’ve only been following the latest round of updates to WordPress from a distance, but when I received the official 3.3 release notice this morning from Matt Mullenweg I upgraded immediately. I’m really loving the UI enhancements, and little dialogues as I go through the upgraded interface.

    First off the welcome message, and pointer tips, though not needed for my experience of WordPress would most definitely enhance the newbie’s experience. And the ability for developers to hook into this feature with their own tips and helpguides takes the ease of use of WordPress to another level.

    The reductions of clicks in using the interface which include instant flyout menus and drag & drop uploader for media, as well as media detection during upload shows that the developers at WordPress are pushing further and further to make it the ultimate user experience.

    Quoting Matt Mullenweg at one of his state of the Word addresses.

    “So easy even a caveman can do it”

    They’ve really put their actions behind this statement, integrating a number of help features including an enhanced help slideout menu with contextual tips and guides to make the user’s experience pleasurable.

    You need look no further than the WordPress.org homepage to know that ease of use, and minimal distraction free content creation is a fundamental part of the direction they’re moving in.

    WordPress does certainly keep us WP professionals on our toes though, especially so those developing training materials and guides, their regular UI updates means we need to re-create our materials regularly to reflect the changes.

    [box type=”alert” size=”large” style=”rounded” border=”full”]Before you upgrade though, make sure you’re fully backed up and that any themes or plugins which power your site are compatible with the latest release. [/box]

    I’m generally more trusting of the upgrades so I wildy go about upgrading this site specifically as soon as upgrades appear.

  • I’m running on wordperss 2.7 RC1

    A few days ago with the release of release candidate 1 for wordpress 2.7, I tested it out on my local install and without any bugginess decided to go live. One or 2 plugins conflicted with the new install which rendered nomad-one.com a blank white screen for a few hours. I also forgot to reset my index.php file to tell it I was running wordpress from it’s own directory within my root folder.

    wordpress27

    One or 2 fixes later and I’m glad to say WP 2.7 RC1 has given me no more problems and is a huge pleasure to use. I recommend upgrading, but be sure to disable all plugins, and follow the regular upgrade process very strictly by backing up all files, backing up your database and taking it a step at a time. If there’s anything special you’ve done within your wordpress install be sure to pay attention not to overwrite any custom mods.

    Once you have WP RC1 running upgrading is as simple as one click away once the official release is out.

    I’m currently working on a detailed step by step dashboard guide for 2.7 which I hope to make available in pdf format in the next week or 2.

    WordPress 2.7 sees a major overhaul of the administration interface, integration of some great previously external plugin functionality. The menu and easy to use dashboard customisations are my favourite improvements making managing yoru wordpress site easier than ever. You can also quickly swicth off certain panels which are of no relevence to you or your clients.

    Grab a copy of the latest release at www.wordpress.org, or stay tuned for the official version which should be available in the next few weeks. I just couldn’t wait anymore.

  • What’s the whole buzz about WordPress 2.5?

    As you may have heard WordPress 2.5, the much hyped upgrade from 2.3 skipping 2.4 has been delayed for more than the promised week. I don’t know much about what they’ll be doing with the new release and took a little peak at the demo site.

    So what is really different about WordPress 2.5

    Admin Interface Re-design

    The admin area of wordpress has seen a significant overhaul, not so much in functionality as far as I can tell, but in terms of the user-interface and design with a few added extras. Here’s hoping it works faster than the existing one as I find one of the issues is the loading time with my limited bandwidth. I logged into the 2.5 demo site and poked around a little taking a few pics.

    Here’s a few screens of the admin interface

    Wordpress 2.5 Dashboard re-designed

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