WordPress 2.5: Perhaps I was wrong
By AndrewBoyd • Mar 18th, 2008 • Category: Blogging tips, Recent posts…and it does totally suck.
The WordPress blog has announced that the “Lite” version that I spoke about in WordPress 2.5 Alpha: It doesn’t totally suck is going to be adopted. Sadly, they seem proud of it.
Here’s what I had to say about it on the Aussie Bloggers Forum:
“We’ve cut the number of navigation options by half” and “We’ve omitted superfluous information” are not always a good thing.
“The new write screen only displays the information that you’ll use most often. It displays the most common fields in a way that makes posting incredibly easy. Additional options are hidden away until you need them.” If it is anything like the admin panel I reviewed in WordPress 2.5 Alpha: It doesn’t totally suck, then the most common fields that I use are hidden.
In short, it appears that they have dumbed it down a lot - simplification for simplification’s sake. The only people that the changes may help are those that are new to it, not the millions of people who use it successfully every day. It is like they’ve had one email from an ageing relative complaining about complexity and stripped anything not immediately relevant to the simplest task away. In other words, they’ve hidden the stuff that a lot of bloggers use all the time.
Why hide used necessary functionality? Why alienate current users? The only thing I can think of that makes sense is a planned premium edition where they charge for bringing the fire back. As evil as this sounds, the only conclusion I can come to otherwise is that they have totally lost it. Pity.
As I mentioned in WordPress 2.5 Alpha: It doesn’t totally suck, the new way of doing things (by hiding a lot of functionality behind multiple toolbars) is going to make things harder. Imagine starting a sentance for a complete newcomer with “In the right upper toolbar menu, select Settings then …” - how do they think that is going to go?
Let me add a few more thoughts to that. The WordPress blog entry says:
The result is a new way of interacting with WordPress that will remain familiar to seasoned users while improving the experience for everyone.
Riddle me this one: I’ve been designing interfaces for most of the last 10 years, and I still don’t know how you effectively remove necessary core functionality from established users by hiding it and have the application continue to “remain familiar” to them. If you change it, it is no longer familiar, QED.
And again, from the WordPress blog:
In interviewing users, we found that most of you ignore the Dashboard entirely — its useful information being mostly hidden in an overly complex design.
Maybe I’m wrong here, but I’d like to see the analysis process behind that one that took “we don’t look at the Dashboard” and decided that this was a problem. Yes, we ignore the Dashboard only when it gets in the way of writing a post in a hurry. Does that mean that the Dashboard has to be re-accentuated by adding some of the functionality that was present in some of the other screens? Or does it mean that there really wasn’t a problem to begin with? That we liked the Dashboard exactly how it was - as something that was there when we needed it but really didn’t get in the way?
And another gem:
The WordPress navigation has confounded even sophisticated users.
Are we talking about “sophisticated” as in they look good in little black dresses, or sophisticated as in they are allowed out of their front doors without their mothers? 
Will I use it? Yes, because as sucky as 2.5 looks like being, it will still be easier than the alternatives. It doesn’t mean I have to like it.
What were they thinking?
AndrewBoyd is a consultant by day and blogger by night. He loves good food, good wine, and discussing faceted classification schemes with friends.
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My fears have been realised I think Andrew!!
I’m not sure why they did this, but I gotta say that I’m going to hold off on upgrading, perhaps unless someone comes up with an admin theme that has the same functionality and look of the current admin panel.
As far as ignoring the dashboard, I don’t - I’ll look at the links that are at the bottom of the page (i.e. the gray boxes with posts from the WP dev team and some other folks)
BTW, I noticed that in the post (and this might be a settings thing on your end, not 100% sure), the only trackbacks that are listed seem to be ones that are either neutral or positive…
Sephyroth
Hi Keiron,
thank you for your comment.
Mine too - I’m not sure how many people are going to like 2.5, new or old. One of the things that worries me is that by changing every screen, they are ripping the “corporate knowledge” away from the long-term users who are one of the help sources for newcomers.
No doubt there will be a thriving trade in information on how to convert established WordPress users to 2.5’s brave new world.
Best regards, Andrew
Hi Sephyroth,
thank you for your comment.
I hope that the “show it to me like I’m used to in 2.4″ admin theme comes out soon
Interesting comment on the trackbacks - as I write this, six hours after the post above, there are 49 trackbacks, and none of them look like mine (or any other negative comment, indeed). Combing trackbacks to filter out negatives on an application that has not been released yet is a really serious warning sign - this is the Internet, it is 2008, ignoring negative comment will not make it go away (and recent history has shown that it can actually make things worse).
Anyone with any concerns should write about them now - if only to see if and how Automattic responds.
Best regards, Andrew
So how are those who’ve only just gotten used to our current Dashboards going to go? Am I going to have to start again with getting my head around something new?
Hi Lightening,
thank you for your comment.
The inference is that yes, you will have to relearn most of what you know about WordPress. That this sucks is probably an understatement.
Best regards, Andrew
[…] is a result of my noticing that one of the first posts about the new release, Andrew Boyd’s WordPress 2.5: Perhaps I was wrong (posted sometime around 6 AM my time, about 6 hours or so after the original post was made), which […]
Nooo don’t tell me that - I am just getting used to the way it is now.
In general I find it easy to use and love the fact that everything is easy to find. If they start “hiding” things it will be so much harder to use.
Admittedly after only using Wordpress for a short time I still have lots to learn, I don’t want to start again at the bottom of a steep learning curve.
I don’t mind it - I’ve installed the 2.5 release candidate and apart from it killing my popularity plugin and embedded video (although it has some embedded video/mp3/media features).
I really like its HTML editing upon first glance and honestly don’t dislike the way things are laid out, I wouldn’t say no to an admin css revisit though.
Hi Gemisht,
thank you for your comment. I think, as Lee and others have pointed out, that we will probably all live
I just can’t see the point of them crowing about how they’ve improved it.
There will be a lot of people around who help other people get through it. That is the way of all things, especially on the Forum.
Best regards, Andrew
Hi Lee,
as I said to Gemisht, I believe that we’ll probably collectively survive the change. I dislike Automattic’s “look, we got some famous designers involved, so it must be better!” attitude. I can argue that it is not better. The first rule is to do no harm, and I can’t see that they’ve followed that.
Best regards, Andrew
I have to admit I was one of those who was looking forward to this update, but the more I hear the longer I wait to actually do the upgrade. Thanks for sharing your insight on WP, sometimes it is nice to get another opinion other than the press release from the company who makes the product.
Hi new zealand,
thank you for your comment. I spent a little while yesterday playing with a sandbox (i.e. just for fun, to be deleted) install of 2.5 over at Lee’s domain and I think that collectively we’ll probably all live - i.e. the upgrade will cause grief as learned patterns of behaviour get broken down and we adjust, but we’ll probably adjust.
I have to wonder how many people will look at the whole “basically starting again from scratch” thing and decide that this is the time to look at alternatives to WordPress - i.e. if they are starting to learn again, it might be easier to find something that better fits the way they want to work.
Best regards, Andrew
Having just started using Vista and being frustrated by its dumbing down (Are you sure you want to do that, Are you really sure you want to do that. You do not have access to that folder …… grrr), it sounds as if WP5 will cause me annoyance too. Rather than hiding advanced options why can’t they put them under a heading “Advanced Options”. It is not hard to write a post in WP at present - all you really need to know is how to type and press the publish button. Is that not simple enough for those who do not want to do anything more advanced?
Navigation wise one thing I would like to see changed is the plugins put in alphabetical order in options. I always find it hard to find one that I need to change.
Oh well, lets look on the bright side - it will provide plenty of material for those who blog about blogging to write about. There will be a rush to see who can get the tutorials in first
Hi Sue,
the tutorials have already started - and it will be a goldmine for all those who blog about blogging
It is a scary thing - changing stuff to meet the lowest common denominator and inconveniencing everyone else - it may be an American cultural thing. But I do have to agree with Ghandi (who would have made an excellent interface designer) who said “the greatest thing is not to do the greatest good for the largest number of people, but the greatest good for all” - without access to Happy Cog’s research & analysis information it is hard to know why they have done what they have done. Dumbing down may be for the greater good in the long term, but it is sure going to be a pain in the backside for existing experienced users.
Best regards, Andrew
[…] follow my blog know that I am not a huge fan of the admin interface changes in WordPress 2.5. In WordPress 2.5: Perhaps I was wrong I even got a little abusive. So today, when I learned that it was out, I upgraded a couple of my […]
I absolutly hate 2.5! If I had time I would rollback to the previous 2.3 version, which was way better compared to the piece of downgraded shit we have to work with now.
- The most annoying thing is the location of the category list. It is a bad one because I want to verify the category right before saving and especially publishing, but the list of categories is out of sight, down below the page. So I have to scroll away from the button and then come back. It takes far longer to compose a post as you now have to scroll up and down a lot more. Why these changes were made is completely baffling.
Was the publish button still at the bottom too, I could cope. But now it moved to the top of the page, which is cool: it probably wanted to stay closer to the categories and guess what? The categories moved.
- I really dislike the new admin panel. They took a familiar layout, changed it, and even changed the names of some of the most important links. Why? There’s absolutely no reason for this. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
- The Manage panel is now missing important post information, which is now all hidden. So if I want to publish a whole whack of posts in sequence, it’s a right pain in the behind.
- If you publish a post then edit later, when you “Save”, the session does not close. They’ve removed the “Save and continue editing” button and changed the functionality of the “Save” button. Another huge mistake.
- Every time I create a new post, there are a multiple draft versions created, whose existence seem to have no relation to any activity on my part. What’s more, there are two types of drafts. I get one single draft that has the post title correct, but it’s in addition to my published post. Then there are anywhere from 3-5 drafts whose title is created from a timestamp.
- An experienced user like myself has some expectation that the interface of the software I use daily doesn’t get chewed up and spit out in a completely unintuitive manner.
- Adding an image is now a byzantine multi-step process where I must now open modal windows, scroll, click, scroll more and click more for each image. Forcing a modal window increases the time spent on placing images dramatically.
- The functions of the Add media buttons (Add an image, Add video, Add audio, Add media) are dubious. Don’t they all do the same thing?
- It now takes 2 clicks instead of 1 to preview a draft post. And since it doesn’t open in a new window, it is impossible to go back and forth between the two views easily.
- To give you an idea of what you are going to experience with 2.5, here is a couple comparisons of the steps require to move one and two text widgets to another sidebar in 2.5 vs. 2.3.x.
Moving one text widget from one sidebar to another in 2.3.x
Go to presentation > widgets
Drag text widget from one sidebar to the other
Click “Save Changes”
Moving one text widget from one sidebar to another in 2.5
Go to design > widgets
Click on the text widget edit link
Copy the content of the widget to the clipboard
Click the remove button
Click the “Save Changes” button
Select the target sidebar from the pulldown
Click Show
Click “Add” on the text widget bar in available widgets
Click edit on the text widget in the sidebar panel
Paste the content into the widget text area
Reenter the title (if one is desired)
Click “Change”
Click “Save Changes”
Moving two text widgets from one sidebar to another in 2.3.x
Go to presentation > widgets
Drag the first text widget from one sidebar to the other
Drag the second text widget from one sidebar to the other
Click “Save Changes”
Moving two text widgets from one sidebar to another in 2.5
Open a new plain text file
Go to design > widgets
Click on the first text widget edit link
Copy the content of the first widget and paste into the text file
Click the remove button
Click on the second text widget edit link
Copy the content of the second widget and paste into the text file
Click the remove button
Click the “Save Changes” button
Select the target sidebar from the pulldown
Click Show
Click “Add” twice on the text widget bar in available widgets
Click edit on the first text widget in the sidebar panel
Copy the text for the first widget from the text file and paste into the text widget
Reenter the title (if one is desired)
Click “Change”
Click “Save Changes”
Click edit on the second text widget in the sidebar panel
Copy the text for the second widget from the text file and paste into the text widget
Reenter the title (if one is desired)
Click “Change”
Click “Save Changes”
Save or close the text file you used
WP 2.5 ? Complete and utterly CRAP.
Huug,
thank you for your wonderful comment. I have seen the above issues, but you have quantified them - made them real in a way that everyone can see. WP2.5 really isn’t easier or faster to use at all.
I don’t know what they were thinking. Tying the ass-backwards interface changes to the promise of continued security updates is almost a form of bullying - they are saying, in effect “here it is, and if you don’t like it, too bad, don’t let the door hit you on the behind on the way out”. The inadequate feedback mechanism for issues (forums patrolled by abusive moderators OR join the developer mailing list) means that they cannot and do not listen to criticism.
Best regards, Andrew
I have to say I’m with you on the abusive help forums. (Is it that hard to be polite?) And the documentation there never seems to get updated in a timely fashion either.
But yes, I only realised today that they weren’t going to be maintaining the security fixes for the 2.3 series when I was checking on something. I find that pretty unjustifiable, particularly given the number of people who do not want to switch.
Hi Lani,
thank you for your comment.
It is a fairly typical conceit - that the software team knows what is best for the average user, and the average user had better either shape up (i.e. upgrade) or ship out. Many are thinking about the best way to ship out - the best advertisement for Linux was Microsoft’s poor attitude, and I think that it is a golden time to be writing alternatives to WordPress.
Best regards, Andrew
[…] to Wordpress 2.5 once I’ve had more of a play with it on one of my niche blogs (and no, I still don’t like it that much - I’ll get used to it I’m […]