Although the FAQ on WordPress 2.5 did an excellent job of answering a ton of frequently asked questions, users chipped in via their comments and ended up asking even more questions. This post will try to highlight a few of the questions brought up in that post and explain the answers in more detail.
Q. Is there a way to see a count on the number of comments you have total?
A. I’ve looked around for that particular detail and it has been omitted from WordPress 2.5. However, the good news is that a ticket has already been made (Ticket #6471) According to the change history, it looks like this will be one of those things that will come along with 2.6 and not WordPress 2.5.1.
Q. What happens if i don’t upgrade to WP 2.5?
A. This is open to opinion but I’ll point out the obvious. If you don’t upgrade, you are putting your blog at risk of being exploited by any known security vulnerability that may have been discovered for your version of WordPress. More specifically, if you are running 2.3.2 or earlier, you are at risk with the exception of 2.0.11 which contains all the security patches for the 2.0 branch. Also, the longer you wait to upgrade, the worst off you’ll be as the last thing anyone wants is to upgrade their blog and one week later, they have to upgrade again.
Q. Where can I find “Multi-file upload with progress bar” as described by Matt on his launching WP 2.5 post?
A. In WordPress 2.5, there is not a button specifically for uploading multiple files. After clicking on any of the ADD MEDIA buttons, click on the CHOOSE FILES TO UPLOAD BUTTON. You can select multiple files and then click on the upload button and each file you selected will then be uploaded to WordPress. You can also select a directory where all files within that directory will be uploaded.
Q. What happened to my Import Links ability?
A. It’s still there, it’s just a little more hidden. You can access the link importer by logging into your WordPress administration area and selecting WRITE – LINK – IMPORT LINKS. Note that the IMPORT LINKS will show up under the RELATED box in the right hand sidebar.
Q. Why can’t I “Save and continue editing” anymore?
A. At first, it may seem like this option doesn’t exist anymore but the SAVE button now acts the same as the old SAVE AND CONTINUE EDITING button.
Q. Some examples of code that uses the [gallery] feature of 2.5
A. WordPress 2.5 introduced something called the gallery shortcode. It looks a little something like this [gallery] The shortcode can be used in either a post or a page and displays a thumbnail set of gallery images attached to that page/post. Here are a few examples in how you could use this shortcode.
columns – specify the number of columns. The gallery will include a break tag at the end of each row, and calculate the column width as appropriate. The default value is 3. If columns is set to 0, no row breaks will be included. For example, to display a 4 column gallery:
For Example: [gallery columns=”4″]
id – specify the post ID. The gallery will display images which are attached to that post. The default behaviour if no ID is specified is to display images attached to the current post. For example, to display images attached to post 123:
For Example: [gallery id=”123″]
size – specify the image size to use for the thumbnail display. Valid values include “thumbnail”, “medium” and “full”. The default is “thumbnail”. For example, to display a gallery of medium sized images:
For Example: [gallery size=”medium”]
Some advanced options are available:
orderby – specify the sort order used to display thumbnails. The default is “menu_order ASC, ID ASC”.
itemtag – the name of the XHTML tag used to enclose each item in the gallery. The default is “dl”.
icontag – the name of the XHTML tag used to enclose each thumbnail icon in the gallery. The default is “dt”.
captiontag – the name of the XHTML tag used to enclose each caption. The default is “dd”. For example, to change the gallery markup to use div, span and p tags:
For Example: [gallery itemtag=”div” icontag=”span” captiontag=”p”]
Special thanks to the folks who put this information in the Codex which you can view here. (Using The Gallery Shortcode)
Q. How do I edit Widget Configuration?
A. Login to your WordPress back end and browse to DESIGN – WIDGETS. Look on the right hand side under CURRENT WIDGETS and click on the EDIT link for any widget you would like to configure the settings for.
If you have any more questions, keep them rolling in as this quite possibly might be a regular feature here at WeblogToolsCollection.com. Also, be sure to read the Codex first if you encounter any issues with WordPress as it’s the best source of documentation available.
I cannot find the edit post slug in the dashboard. I changed the title of a post, and the same old slug is still used. Help? Please?
Do you have any more information about this? I didn’t see any announcement from the WordPress team.
Yeah I created that ticket, but no reply has been made except changing its milestone from 2.5.1 to 2.6! I wonder if it was so difficult to incorporate it in the very next release.
I have yet to find anyone among my WP friends who can upload just one file successfully without at the very least a torturous error message, and at worst a flat-out failure to do anything at all. The video Matt posted of uploading multiple files looked like a fantasy flick to me.
The widgets implementation is appalling. It takes so much longer, so many more clicks, and is hideous to manoeuvre round, compared to the previous system.
No more highly visible and accessible recent entries or scheduled posts on the main dashboard page – not without adding yet another plugin to the mix to provide what previous versions of WP gave us built-in.
Spectacular, no. Spectacularly unimpressive so far, yes. Roll on 2.6… I live in hope…
I’m already on 2.5, but for the record: are you saying that there is at least one security vulnerability that is fixed in 2.5 but not in 2.3.3?
All the “upgrade now!” posts have been saying that the vulnerabilities being exploited are in 2.3.2 and lower.
I’m with Kelson. What, specifically, is the threat that 2.5 fixed that is not fixed in 2.3.3? This notion of pushing everyone to upgrade simply for the sake of upgrading is unnecessary. Many people are unhappy with the new interface and upgrading simply because there may OR MAY NOT be a vulnerability is a little ridiculous.
(For the record, I upgraded by choice. Not because some websites seem to be hounding everyone to DO IT! DO IT! DO IT NOW!)
the SAVE button now acts the same as the old SAVE AND CONTINUE EDITING button.
Actually, that’s not true, at least on my blog. When I click “save,” I get a preview of the post, which is unbelievably frustrating.
I’m also annoyed that I have to resize the edit box every time I write a new post, and whenever I want to insert a url, I have to delete http first, unlike with previous versions, which highlighted http for easy deletion.
2.5 definitely has some neat new features, but also has some very frustrating bugs.
I have to concur with Andy’s thoughts on the widget system. It’s really a lousy new implementation. The use of drop down menu’s to switch between various sidebars is a huge step back from how it worked before.
That said, I’m overall really pleased with the rest of the changes I’ve worked with. The widgets are the only thing I’m unhappy with at this point.
OK, this one needs to be clarified. To this point I was 100% sure that 2.5 is NOT a security fix and it was never identified as such. Do you guys know something I don’t. Please share and elaborate.
@NSpeaksI would like to see that little stat number come back as I believe it would look good within the RIGHT NOW box in the dashboard.
@Andy Are all of your friends on the same hosting account? I have used the file uploader and have even uploaded multiple files and it goes without a hitch.
Your opinion of the new widget administration area seems to be on part with many of the others who have voiced their opinions. One thing I like about this area in 2.5 is the fact that now if a blog has a large number of widget sidebars, dragging a widget from the bottom of the screen all the way to the top is a bad experience. At least this way, all of the sidebars a viewable without the need of scrolling.
@KelsonI’ve fixed that part of the post to be more specific.
@Jonathan HickmanThat is the way the SAVE button is supposed to work and in your case, you are either experiencing a bug or there is some other mishap that is going on. Have you tried getting help for this issue in the WordPress IRC channel or the Support Forums?
I totally share your frustration with having to resize the textarea provided by TinyMCE. It gets pretty annoying after awhile. I also dislike the HTTP from showing up when I want to paste a link.
@Alex I’ve edited that part of the post and now it should be clearer as to what is going on. There were some security enhancements in 2.5 but it really wasn’t meant to be a security release as that will be left to 2.5.1.
After all the talk about 2.5 and a lot of people raving about I gave it a try on a test blog and it’s looking -sorta- ok. I don’t get why it was necessary to change the dashboard so much or to otherwise mess with stuff that works.
Speaking of that dashboard, I’ve read talk about it being skinnable. Is it? and if so, how long before somebody comes out with an admin skin that makes 2.5 look like 2.33?
Finally, What if I decide to move back from 2.5 to 2.33? Will it downgrade gracefully?
How about exclude one image from the gallery with out deleteing it from the server/post? Howdya do that?
I hate the medium image creation thing, it just consumes space on the server – how to disable it? Will changing the size of the medium size image to 0px x 0px do the trick?
@witchypoo: editing the post slug is done by editing the permalink, the field for which is just below the post title on the Write page.
Thanks a bunch!
Translated: http://www.wordpress-fr.net/bl.....ress-25-v2
and included: http://codex.wordpress.org/Use.....dPress_2.5
Reading all of this and other posts/comments from other people who use 2.5, makes me appreciate waiting. I was ready to upgrade my blog since my theme was updated for 2.5 by the theme’s creator (much props to him for that). But after reading all of complaints on here and other places, too. I’ll wait until the time is right to upgrade. IOW, when all the bugs have been fixed and the upgrade is functional (because it sounds like it’s not). Just sayin.
I’m in agreement with quite a few people here that the endless hounding and scare tactics need to stop. What really bothers me about these scare posts is the fact that it completely discounts all the good that came from previous releases of the software.
While it might be advantageous to have everyone running on the same version of WordPress, there are several solid reasons for people to continue using their existing installs.
Another reason to upgrade to 2.5: sites like Technocrati recently announced they would stop indexing sites running vulnerable WordPress installations (as they could be big spam targets)
I got error on design – widget, check picture in here
Too many people seem to forget that 2.5 is more than just an admin redesign, fancy new upload features, etc.
Besides all that as well as being faster, more optimized, etc., it’s also incredibly nice for us plugin developers. So many functions that make my life easier.
Think PHP4 vs. PHP5. Sure, PHP4 works fine, but PHP5 works better.
I for one won’t be supporting anything but WordPress 2.5 with my plugins soon.
@ Viper007Bond
I understand it from your point of view, but for de ordinary user of this great piece of software it’s different.
There are to many features in 2.5 that create hick-ups or just don’t work wich is difficult to deal with for us normal users in comparison with 2.3.3
Just upgraded to 2.5 was getting spam links in 2.0.1. After upgrading I’ve found that all my links that were coded to open in new window are opening in the same window in Firefox 2.0 with no back button – like Firefox thinks it’s a new window. Anyone experienced this?
I’m with Kelson. What, specifically, is the threat that 2.5 fixed that is not fixed in 2.3.3? This notion of pushing everyone to upgrade simply for the sake of upgrading is unnecessary. Many people are unhappy with the new interface and upgrading simply because there may OR MAY NOT be a vulnerability is a little ridiculous.
(For the record, I upgraded by choice. Not because some websites seem to be hounding everyone to DO IT! DO IT! DO IT NOW!)
I think that I am probably pointing out the obvious but if everyone upgraded more people would be using the newer version and that means that more people would find bugs with the newer version (and hopefully report them). Old hat is old hat. The bugs that are found in older versions shouldn’t matter any more. The newer version is what people should be using, and new users more than likely will be using.
Upgrading to WP 2.5 only serves to help the development process.
(My opinion of course, attached please find a grain of salt and a hot dog bun to make it palatable…)
Interesting to see so many negative comments about 2.5
I’ve done the upgrade, and the style / look and feel is tidier, but the behaviour is unnecessarily different in several places.
The uploading images / files I can’t seem to get to work yet – must be doing something wrong ? And the Save button behaviour means you lose the return to the blog view behaviour after minor corrective edits. I also have different behaviours on the individual post&comment and query generated pages, different from the top level pages … though that may have something to do with my themes style sheets not being compatible with the latest WP ?
Lots of maintenance / re-adjustment to do to get happy with the 2.5 upgrade. All a bit messy, which is disapointing after truly excellent previous experience.
I’d like to know how to split my RSS feeds at the link as per the 2.3 version. Isn’t there an option in the config to re-enable this?
Jeffro, hint: [<b></b>gallery<b></b>] 🙂
(I edited your post)
WP 2.5 looks phenomenal from the back-end… clean design, great color palette, etc. BUT even though I bragged about upgrading, I am COMPLETELY disappointed in using it several days later. Specifically, I can’t use any of the media features using IE7 (i’m running the latest version on Vista) and only FF2 works. My friend experienced this, too, so I’m not sure what the deal is. Another thing: Does anybody know how to get rid of the default css class that gets packed into each uploaded picture? Moving on to the widget panel… what was so wrong with it that it had to be completely revamped to something much less user-friendly? It’s just a pain. I mean, does anybody know how to remove sidebar widgets without actually deleting them? I’m using a few duplicate widgets and chose to switch some out. After finding out that I couldn’t drag them out of place like in the previous WP version, I decided to hit “remove” and – WHAM! – there goes my widget FOREVER! Worst of all is that Otto42 mentioned that reverting back to 2.4 would require to delete everything and even re-import the old DBs. One week into WP 2.5, I already have too many posts to re-post with my backed up data. This is just bad news all around. I LOVE this CMS, but it doesn’t seem like the WP team got enough feedback to make this version solid with so many complaints already. If 2.4 would have had the aesthetically pleasing edits of 2.5, this would have been completely fine!
Mike: For those having media uploader problems (including the IE7 bug) with WordPress version 2.5, please check out the following thread on the WordPress forums: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/164999
I almost didn’t upgrade, because the images I saw in the preview were not appealing. The interface is not, IMO, an improvement, and I keep having trouble finding things, especially plugins whose instructions were written for the older versions with the familiar menus. I don’t care about the media uploader or the widgets, and the post box has been a pain for as long as I’ve been using WP, mostly because it keeps trying to “fix” my HTML to fit its idea of better formatting. What convinced me to go for it was the one-click updates for the plugins – that is convenient. What’s not so convenient is that I seem to have lost the administrator’s privilege of editing other posters’ comments on my entries. What happened?
I did upgrade to 2.5 but found it very poorly laid out. What used to take one click takes five. Somethings don’t work at all. The widget editor wont work properly in IE6 and when it does work is confusing and slow.
I think I’ve read about five posts on the WordPress forum praising the new back end and about a hundred requesting the old one back.
I’ve rolled back to 2.3.3 as I want blogging software that is quick, efficient to use and fully working, I don’t care if it is styled to modern fashion.
Nice this FAQ…
But it does not answer my question… Perhaps it’s one less asked…
Ever since upgrading to WP2.5 the comments on my blog seem to be broken.
They’re saved in the dbase, and i get a mail for aithorization, they just don’t show up on my blog anymore, deactivated all plugins and changed to another theme, both did not help.
Anyone who can shed some light onto this? Is this a known problem?
Doc G – I ran into a similar issue. Try going into Settings > Permalinks and re-saving your current settings. That fixed my problem.
@RichardB : Nope, doesn’t fix it, alas!
There is an old English saying “don’t fix what is not broken…”, to me it seems that WP developers forgot that one. My feeling is that WP team wants to drag us into some kind of car race against other blogging platforms. Sorry but I don’t need that race… UBUNTU team would be a great example for WP developers, perhaps WP also could have versions that would be supported for let’s say 3 years… Now they pushing everyone to upgrade to every version…
People are complaining about plugin compatibility. I’m not talking about 20-40 various plugins that some of them are using, but about essential ones like FeedBurner plugin. How someone can blame us for not upgrading.
Geez. Reading all this has persuaded me to wait to upgrade as the items that don’t work well are major daily intrusions. In the meantime, for those who have upgraded, maybe you can do what I do occasionally for long posts: Write them in Word (including inserting links) and paste them into WP with the Word pasting tool. Saves a lot of effort.
using wp version 2.5
when i use the upload media and pick size large for picture size and then send to editor, the editor is changing the size to a maximum of 500px for the width even though the pictures may be 600px or more wide. I have to reedit the sizes for the pictures before they will display at the right size. bug?
This was a great FAQ, helped me with several questions I had about 2.5.
Q. How do I edit Widget Configuration?
A. Login to your WordPress back end and browse to DESIGN – WIDGETS. Look on the right hand side under CURRENT WIDGETS and click on the EDIT link for any widget you would like to configure the settings for.
— Okay… but… how do I edit Widgets?
Your answer says nothing to me that I didnt know, but I still cant edit widgets. I click on “edit” and the Widget opens, but only half of the edit screen appears – the left side is cut off. When I try to move the widget it so I can see the box fully, it just snaps back into place. When I try to move it, the whole widget window does appear, and I can see buttons in the lower left of it for “change” and “remove”… but I cant get to them because as soon as I let go of the widget, it snaps back like I said, and the left side of the box cuts off. Also… when I try to add a new Text Widget, and then click “change” it disappears. I’ve had friends test this too on their computers, same thing. I’ve heard there is a IE 6.0 conflict (which should be fixed considering how many use 6.0 compared to 7)… but my girlfriend used Firefox and had the same problem.
Overall… the dashboard looks more modern… but it is also more clumsy. Not a matter of “getting used to”… there are some things good – like the Manage page having Cats, Tags, everything listed nicely… but the Post Edit page used to be better organized – you’d have the post window, category list, tags, everying appearing together… now you have to scroll to get to things… some will say “so what”, but thats the idea of design, to make as user friendly and logical as possible. Scrolling around to get to things, when you used to have it all put nicely together and be able to see it all in one glance… thats going from good to not so much.
Congrats on this new release. I like the new admin layout a lot, much cleaner and a lot of new interesting stuff! However, I had the issue that the widgets get cleared blank if I have 5 text widgets, maybe thats my own fault, didnt fix it yet. I also wonder why my TAG feeds jump to the generic feedburner rss feed, maybe the feedburner plugin does that, have to investigate.
@Paul Huel Try checking your Images Size settings under Settings > Miscellaneous. There, you can set a maximum image size to which items are downsized — I bet you have your set to 500 there.
apparently 2.5 is not a safe version either.. my site got compromised with 2.3.3 but just found this.
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/28703/info
Great FAQ.
But im looking for answer not found here.
Ive noticed that my plugins can be upgraded automatically. But how.
I have to provide a hostname, username, password. Any clue where to get that ?
I love the new “[gallery]” shortcode. My nlog is basically a place where I can show my photography. I use a special category for recent shoots, so I was wondering if you knew how I could expand this gallery shortcode so that instead of pulling a single post ID, it would pull an entire category ID to create a page of images like a photo blog gallery. Does this make sense? So instead of gallery id=”9″, it would read gallery catId=”9″.
@Paul Huel Try checking your Images Size settings under Settings > Miscellaneous. There, you can set a maximum image size to which items are downsized — I bet you have your set to 500 there.
that was one of the first things that i tried, i set it to 700 but that says it is for medium sized pictures?
@Paul Huel — That’s correct. There are three photo sizes you can insert with the Media Library popup: thumbnail (small), medium (err, medium), and full-size (large). Insert “medium” pictures into your post to have them obey the size limit you defined — then when you insert them, you can choose to have the medium image link to the larger image, if you want to offer people the chance to view the big picture.
@Janet: I’ve always used Notepad. Doesn’t change the fact that the post box is wonky; even though I can mostly get it to do what I want that way, it always fights me on single line breaks vs. paragraph breaks. Sometimes I just want to use a BR/ tag. I left out the angle brackets so it’ll show. (and this is another case in point – it keeps displaying the below section offset for no reason I can see)
@Jacob Bager: What plugins are you using? The hostname, username, and password I have had to enter were in the initial configuration of WP. Sounds like you have something that needs access to your database (and probably uses the same names that are in your config file).
Either that or the plugin creator has not configured the plugin for the one-click update to work properly, in which case the hostname, username, and password have to come from the plugin creator.
Okay, apparently the offset was just a Comment-in-Edit glitch. Still strange.
i am chosing the full size image in the requester and it is still constraining the size to 500px width unless i edit it and save it.
@ Chrystalline
NO its not the Database host information from the setup. I’ve provided some screen shots.
Firs the plugin page
I click the “upgrade automatically” link and
get this page
Anyone have a clue about what this is .
the link is available on every plugin that needs to be upgraded.
Help !
A new item I just noticed with 2.5.
On the new WP UI, I don’t seem to have any way to edit Comments.
Is that correct ? What am I missing ?
(Also can’t see how the post-slug is managed ?)
Still confused about two existing items.
Media / Image insertion … still can’t figure out.
Theme / Style / Plug-ins … still have some behaviours I don’t understand.
This is gonna require some effort, possible a re-design / new themes / styles ?
Ian G
http://www.psybertron.org
@curious: That vulnerability is bogus
So here’s my update for all who are disappointed with some features in WP 2.5: For those of you annoyed with the new widget panel, I’ve DOWNGRADED back to 2.3.3 and couldn’t be happier to see the old duotone blues and “Presentation” page! It’s heaven!! I can honestly tell you that I haven’t been completely sold on the entire package of this new release. The multiple picture uploads was by far the most useful feature and if you’re a single author on one blog, WP 2.5 is probably for you. BUT after having dug through the long tail of 2.5 bugs like “blank admin page” (try googling that) and lots of plugin incompatibilities and lots of “what happened with (insert favorite Wp 2.3.3 feature)” from my users, it was just better to scrap it altogether and revert to the previous version. A sound advice to those who want to do the same: Find out if you have SSH access if your backed up sql file is larger than 2MB… otherwise, you’ll run into more problems!
@Jacob Bager:
That’s a widget plugin. I don’t use widgets, but there have been several complaints in the thread about how WP 2.5 is not working correctly with widgets.
Have you tried manually updating it to see if that fixes the problem? Perhaps the auto-update data is in the update you haven’t installed yet?
Based on that second screenshot, my best guess is that the plugin needs the FTP information to access the plugin creator’s database for the update. If a manual update doesn’t make things any better, try contacting the plugin creator and see if they have any help for the auto-update.
Ah – My TEXT WIDGET are onpening only HALF – I am not able to ADD & EDIT TEXt WIDGETS Hell WordPress 2.5