I took some time today to download the latest version of WordPress (2.5 beta 1) and decided this would be a perfect opportunity to switch to using subversion to manage my WordPress updates. Now that I am all switched over – updates will be much easier to manage.

My initial thoughts and opinions on WordPress 2.5:

• The upgrade was painless – 5 minutes.
• All my plugins worked except for my “Secure Admin” plugin – but that was out of date.
• My theme works fine – after I made some adjustments to some of my AJAX features that relied on an outdated version of Prototype.
• The new admin interface is well laid out for the most part. I am still not sure I am sold on the really light colors, but I will give it some time to grow on me.
• The admin interface is cleaner – it no longer shows artifacts like post and category ID which only a few of us use. (If you want to see the post ID or cat ID, just hover over the edit link next to these items and you can see it in the URL – thanks Demitrious)
• The post interface is much elongated due to the options that were once available in the right hand column (categories, password protect post, etc) are now below the post box instead of next to it. This is going to take some time to get used to.
• Overall – this is a big release and I look forward to working with the changes and enhancements.