An Open “FUCK YOU” To Wordpress 2.5
So, you may notice that our daily post count’s slowed down a little. This is due largely in part to the recent Wordpress upgrade to 2.5. (that and the fact that no one else posts. slackers)
When we first saw the videos of 2.5 in action on the Wordpress blog, we were all so excited about the new features and functionality, but little did we know that this upgrade would just be a crippled version of the Wordpress that we loved for allowing us to post with such quickness and ease.
Let’s break down a few of the fuck-ups, shall we?
Widgets
Widgets are no longer awesome and easier to use. Prior to the upgrade, we were able to drag our widgets to the desired sidebar on the site. Drag-and-drop is the most user friendly feature ever that made editing widgets and quick and painless process.
Apparently, quick and painless isn’t good for users because the kind folks over at Wordpress decided to barbarically rape once-awesome feature by turning the simple process into a painful burden.
Now, if we want to edit our widgets, instead of simple drag-and-drop, we have to select which sidebar of the site we want to edit. Once we click either Sidebar 1 or Sidebar 2, we get to wait for the widgets being used in said bar to load. YES! This is WAY more convenient than being able to see all my widgets at once. I love having to click around and wait for things to load! Thank you, Wordpress.
Uploading Pictures
Again, the Wordpress developers take what was once a simple and quick process and they turn it into nothing more than a pain in the ass. When we saw the preview video of 2.5 in action, one of things we were most excited about were the addition of galleries and uploading more than one picture at a time. Uploading multiple pictures is truly an awesome improvement and I love it, but why did they change the whole uploading interface?
Before 2.5, all you had to do was click a ‘Browse’ button, select your file, then upload it. Now, you have to click the little ‘Add An Image” button, wait for a freaking menu to load. Once you have your file uploaded, the menu closes without inserting your picture into the post. If you upload multiple pictures at a time, the menu will close before you get a chance to insert a picture into your post
WHAT THE SHIT!?
So now you have to click “Add An Image” all over again, wait for the menu to load, then click either the ‘Gallery’ or ‘Media Library’ tab. THEN when it loads all your pictures, you have to click ‘Show’ for a dropdown menu to appear where you can FINALLY click ‘Insert Into Post’. Why did that take so long? I could have logged into an FTP account and coded the whole post in HTML faster than that shit.
And galleries. Ooohhhh galleries. I tried to make a gallery just like the dude in the video. he made it look so simple! He uploaded all of his pictures at once and BAM! I tried to make a gallery, but the pictures where a little bit on the huge side because they were hi-res and detailed. I trudged through the painstaking task of uploading the pics, I checked off the box to make the images appear as tiny thumbnails so that they’d fit nicely with our site’s layout, then I did the gallery thing like the dude in the video. Fucking piece of shit made a gallery, but it didn’t turn the pics into thumbnails! They stayed their regular huge-ass size!! I couldn’t figure out how to fix it, so you’ll probably never see a pretty Wordpress gallery on this site in the future.
Embedding Media
Don’t even get me fucking started. Embedding media has NEVER really been a fun process with Wordpress unless it’s YouTube video and you have the right plugin for it. You had to go to your user preferences, turn off the visual editor, then proceed to write up your post using the HTML editor. If you had the visual editor turned on and just tried to edit in the HTML tab, well… you’d be fucked and have to turn that visual shit off.
So, I go to post a video of some fresh underground graffiti battles. Check the link. Notice how there’s a bunch of space underneath the video? What the fuck? Also, when I put the ‘embed’ code in the post, I edited the height and width to fit perfectly with our post format (500×500), but those changes didn’t happen. When I went back into the post to see what I did wrong, there was lines of code that I didn’t put in there. They were put there by Wordpress 2.5 being lame.
There IS an ‘Add Video’ function, but it’s pretty much shit. Supposedly, all you have to do is insert the URL for the video. I tried this, but all it did was give me a hyperlink. Thankfully, YouTube video still works since we have a fresh plugin called YouTube Brackets. A handy function that should have been included in the 2.5 upgrade.
Weird shit happening in different browsers
I constantly update this site around the clock. There’s 4 of us posting, but I’m the only one actually posting all day every day. This means I post at work on a Mac using Firefox at home, and when I get to work I’m running Windows with Firefox. For some fucked up reason, whenever I’m at work and want to do something simple in the visual editor like insert a link or change the size of a picture, the pop-up menus turn up blank so that I can’t change any of the parameters. So far, this is really the only weird shit that I’ve experienced in another browser… I just wanted an extra opportunity to using Heading 2.
In conclusion
If you run a site that needs to be updated quickly and easily without any obstacles, please, for the love of God, don’t upgrade to 2.5 Wordpress 2.0 was WONDERFUL. If you just use Wordpress for a personal blog that you don’t update all that frequently, well then, these probably aren’t huge concerns to you and the handy features in Wordpress 2.5 aren’t too bad. I just feel like they tried to make things too organized and it made things a lot less streamlined for me.
I understand that Wordpress is free and I could easily use something else, but we made the jump to Wordpress BECAUSE of how easy and streamlined it was. I don’t think I’m the only one who feels this way and i really hope all the bugs get worked out soon.
Feel free to talk some shit in the comments.
Please digg this so that others may know of my pain.
Why are you using widgets? After spending too much time figuring out which widgets were screwing up what I just hardcoded everything into my side bar. It’s easier
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Because I suck at code =-(
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Wrong Digg link?
Sucks about all the crappy changes, I just want to know how to get a picture to show up on Albotas!
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As a guy who has a WordPress site that has an image in EVERY post, I’m glad to get a heads up on this… I am seriously going to consider waiting until this gets resolved somehow.
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Glad it helped out! I’m REALLY hoping they fix it.
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Uploading pictures is painfull
For me, Wordpress jumped the shark.
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So what’s like, the highest version I can install before 2.5? 2.4? The version I’m running now is horribly out of date, but I was kind of waiting for 2.5 to upgrade. -_-;
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“So what’s like, the highest version I can install before 2.5? 2.4? The version I’m running now is horribly out of date, but I was kind of waiting for 2.5 to upgrade. -_-;”
Umm…… not sure…..
All I know is that I left a LOT of gripes out of that rant. You know how when you want to add a tag you just type a string of tags separated by commas and that was it? Well, now you have to hit a freaking “Save” button. Do you know how many times I forgot to hit save because I was so used to everything making sense!?
And freaking blockquotes, we use them A LOT!!!! They’re so much more difficult to use with the visual editor now that it’s easier to just manage them in HTML view.
Eddie needs to jump in on this. He’s the dude that handles most of the techie stuff.
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I never used the WYSIWYG so I don’t know what are those prob most people are talking about.
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Hey, though I don’t update as often as you guys do, I have to say that both my upgrade and use of the newest Wordpress has been rather smooth. I do advise that you reserve some time to play with the widgets/sidebar, and in terms of the image… I insert one in most of my posts and there’s been no issue.
I did, however, experience a problem in the beginning, one that I quickly fixed, you need to insert a code into your main index file, I shall find it and send it to you. This should help with the uploads. In terms of other bugs, there are many, but I joined the testing team and see that people are finding solutions. I recommend people wait just a little longer. But really, I love playing with the newest version. Especially when I post/add a new page, etc.
Sorry you’ve had a hard time, and sorry this was a long response.
=)
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Well, the embedding media deal’s been sorted out. Current.tv just has stupid code. As for the other stuff, I guess I’m just pizzed that they made it so that things take longer to do than they did in oldschool WP. It’s only a few seconds longer for most things, but when I’m trying to post stuff as fast as I can at work in between handling customer calls, every second counts.
And don’t worry about the long response, that just means people actually read my stupid little rants. Thanks! ^___^
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I sort of agree with you on the sidebar-widgets hassle,tho I used to have trouble with the drag and drop to remove a widget-adding one was easy.
I don’t miss the drag and drop but I can imagine it was a shock to see it’s gone for someone who really liked it.I guess I don’t play around much with widgets that much anyway–once they’re there they’re there for months.
But I like the new gallery adding multiple images at once is a massive improvement.
Eddie should be able to figure out how to make your thumbs thumbs!
Get him to open the new template file image.php and figure out what’s causing the mess.But you could always resize the images before you upload them! You ought to do this anyway–digital camera pics are HUGE and there is no earthly reason to upload one raw.
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Stop whining about 2.5 - it’s fantastic! So you have to click your mouse a few extra times - these hiccoughs will soon be ironed out. It’s called progress!
As for the YouTube brackets plugin - I think google have now changed the code because it seems only to work for vids I posted prior to around 1-2 weeks ago.
Karen x
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And you left out another part of the WP 2.5 debacle. They just decided to delete the Pressit function. Gone. It’ll supposedly return in 2.6.
This isn’t a problem for people who upgrade- their old pressit bookmark will still work- but, new install people are screwed.
I had to write a post with the code so my students could try to make a pressit bookmark for themselves: http://www.websitetology.com/?p=303
I think it was deleted for the same reason they dumped the ajax for widgets- all of a sudden- they don’t like ajax.
I’ve gotten used to the new blockquotes-
but, the extended formatting toolbar- the address tag doesn’t work either- and you’re absolutely right about the media uploader- it SUCKS.
But- the new interface is a step in the right direction- and the idea of the media uploader is long overdue- it just doesn’t work.
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[...] the more colorful post- I can’t even post the link- go here. This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 10:26 am and is filed under Word Press [...]
I installed 2.5 only to find K2 widgets caused loads of problems.I manually reinstalled 2.3 but after a couple of days found my public_html folder had been hacked with 3 .tar files (2gb each) so reinslalled 2,5
Mike
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the flash picture uploader just sucks but the good news is a plugin was made to turn that crap off. here’s the link… http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/no-flash-uploader/
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Actually I did not upgrade to Wordpress 2.5 either.
The main reason is for what I do, it works and as the saying goes “if it aint broker, dont fix it”
One really irratating thing though is the fact that Wordpress keeps fucking with my html code. Its easier for me to write whatever I need to, then choose “save and continue editing” , then check it.
The reason for that is because every damn time I try to save it , the spaces / line breaks are never remembered or saved by wordpress. Wordpress keeps removing them, messing up the formatting as well.
At the very least in the next version i want the ability to directly edit the html , and when i save it , i want wordpress to save EXACTLY” what I have put into the code view, not to remove extra line breaks and such.
So I totally understand all the complaints
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I HAAAATEEEE when they eff with my HTML. I’m glad to see some of you out there get where I’m coming from.
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