Electron Hut: Kyle Bedell’s Blog

As you all have probably seen from Matt’s post and the brand-new blog management UI, we’re running WordPress MU 1.5.1, the multi-user version of WordPress 2.5. It packs a slew of improvements and incorporates all sorts of findings from Happy Cog’s usability testing activities. Note the new headings and task organization in the admin interface.

You’ll notice that the dashboard no longer stinks. There’s substantially less clutter (what was up with the WordPress.com RSS feed taking up the entire page in the old version?) and the dashboard now supports widgets to let you add and remove information clusters as you see fit. There’s a nifty little ‘comment bubble’ that shows how many comments you have sitting in moderation too.

The file uploading interface is also vastly improved, and now supports both multiple uploads (yay) and EXIF exraction from any JPEG files you uploaded, so you can embed that information into your blog templates. Speaking of pictures, you can easily create image galleries by placing a tag in your post after you’ve uploaded a bunch of images. Check out the detailed documentation for some additional tips and tricks.

The search interface now searches through posts and pages (it used to only search through posts). You can also edit your post tags from inside the admin interface (no more management plugins required).

The visual editor is MASSIVELY improved over what it was before. If you’ve been working in ‘code view’, give the new visual editor a shot. You may still not like it, but I think you’ll agree that it’s superior to the old version. There’s a full-screen view option available, embedded ‘add media’ tools, and the interface generally looks cleaner with less clutter. Also, while I doubt this applies to anyone, there’s also concurrent-edit protection in case you get multiple folks editing the same post at once.

The techie administration folks like Matt will enjoy:

• Salted passwords (making brute-force cracking tactics more-or-less useless)
• Secure cookies (they’re encrypted!)
• Inline documentation for the WordPress code
• Database optimizations (some minor speed improvements)
• Expandable ‘Add Media’ buttons on the writing interface
• Automatic plug-in updating

Enjoy, and keep on writing!