I just installed this nice little plugin called Wordpress Download Monitor. I didn’t have any control over the files being downloaded. There aren’t many right now, but since I plan to release more free wordpress themes in the next couple of months, it’s good to have some statistics on site.
Of course there are other Wordpress plugins to help you manage downloads, but this one is simple and easy to use. And you know me… I love simplicity.
By the way, you should really get your copy of the Corporate Sandbox. And in case you already downloaded it, you should do it again, cause I uploaded a new version, that’s a bit more flexible.
After upgrading to Wordpress 2.5 a couple of days ago, I promised I would write a review. I will use some screenshots of Wordpress 2.5 and Wordpress 2.3, in order to highlight the improvements, but also the things I consider to be a bad move.
Hopefully, this will help some of you decide whether upgrading to Wordpress 2.5 is a good move. Here goes:
Overall Comments
- The new design is definitely a step forward. It’s much lighter and has some nice AJAX too, making it easier to work with.
- The header containing the main navigation went through a drastic change. I like how they split the menu into links you use on a regular basis and links that you use occasionally. The problem with the new header is that it’s a bit too high, pushing useful content below the fold. The Dashboard tab could be placed next to the right hand side links (maybe highlighted using an icon) and placed on the blueish area. So getting rid of that gray bar and tweaking spacing a bit would save some space.
- I noticed they got rid of the the Edit link in every listing: Posts, Comments, etc. This is not such a big issue, I guess I can get used to it. I’m not sure how a new user (one that jumps straight to Wordpress 2.5) would feel about this: is it more intuitive to have an Edit link, or to click the actual title?
The Dashboard
Wordpress 2.3
Wordpress 2.5
I think the Dashboard is a major step backwards in terms of usability and layout:
- I really don’t find the blog statistics to be that important. That big Right Now section is useless. I think the Incoming Links and Comments (most important part of the Dashboard) are pushed downwards for no good reason. Sure, they’ve put those big buttons there, but I never really use those links. I always click the Write tab, as I am sure most users do.
- There’s something really wrong with the content from those two panels. The font is too small and there are way to many styles in there: bold text, underlined links, various font sizes. That right hand side panel from the old Dashboard was just what the doctor ordered. The first time I saw the new Dashboard I was like: say what? I hope they change something in the next version. But hey… I guess that’s what admin themes are for.
- I noticed there’s now an RSS link for Incoming Links. I guess that can come in handy when you have a popular blog. I’ll be sure to subscribe to that feed when I’ll start getting more links.
The Write Pages
Wordpress 2.3
Wordpress 2.5
The Write page has some improvements, but in terms of usability I think they screwed up:
- Moving the Catgories panel below was a bad move, because now I have to scroll down to choose the categories, then go back up to click Publish. It’s great that they mixed some of the right hand side panels into a single Publish Status panel, but I don’t understand why they couldn’t add Categories above or below that. The Related links seem useless to me.
- By the way, changing the Timestamp is not so obvious. You have to click the Edit link next to where it says “Publish immediately”.
- I like the new Media toolbar. It’s much easier to now add images, video or audio, but most of all it’s much easier to organize your file, by using the Media Library. See screenshots below.
- Something that always bugged me in older version of Wordpress was the fact that I always had to click the Advanced Toolbar when creating a new post. In Wordpress 2.5 your settings for each post are saved, so you will find the screen just like you left it, in Visual or HTML view.
- Interesting fact: for some reason, the Advanced Toolbar is now called Kitchen Sink. Maybe it’s because those settings are for tweaking things “under the hood”?
The Manage Pages
Wordpress 2.3
Wordpress 2.5
Not much to say about the Manage pages. I think they did a great job here:
- It was frustrating to delete items one by one, so having those checkboxes makes it much easier.
- Like I said, the Edit links are gone and so are the View links. To edit an item you have to click its name and to view that page you have to click the Published link (this one is less obvious at first, but you can get used to it).
- They filled the new space with links to Categories and Tags, which is not bad at all.
- Now you can choose to view your Published or just your Draft pages.
The Media Page
Wordpress 2.3
Wordpress 2.5
The old Uploads section is now called Media Library and it’s full blown admin page for all your media files. The new table is much cooler than the old boring list. This one has screenshots, permalinks and also a column with links to posts where you used a certain item.
It’s the first time I noticed each attachment has its own page where you can even leave comments. I wasn’t sure what that attachment.php file was for, but now I know. This might come in handy.
The Comments Page
Wordpress 2.3
Wordpress 2.5
The same comments from Manage pages apply to the Comments page, plus the fact that Wordpress 2.5 also displays Gravatars for each comment. This might be a bit tricky for Wordpress 2.3 users: in order to edit a comment you need to click the person’s name. Thanks goes to Alex from Blogsessive for pointing this out!
The Widgets Page
Wordpress 2.3
Wordpress 2.5
The new Widgets page layout has changed and there are also a few changes in functionality:
- You can only drag the widgets in order to switch them around. If you want to add a widget you have to click the Add link. To remove a widget you have to click Edit and then Remove. I think a small close icon next to the Edit link would have been much better.
- I like the AJAX effect on the widgets when you click Edit. Very nice. Much easier to edit the widgets.
- I would prefer to have the active widgets on the left, but I guess it’s not a big deal.
That’s it for now.
Exactly one month ago (funny coincidence) I said I will release a couple of free Wordpress themes. I’ve been tied up with a couple of projects, but I managed to make some time and implement the first theme:
Today I would like to present Corporate Sandbox, a minimalistic Wordpress theme based on the Sandbox theme. The theme look and feel relies almost entirely on CSS and uses just a couple of images. I wanted to keep it as simple as possible, so that it would integrate with almost any website.
The theme is widget ready and very easy to customize: you can change title color in CSS in just a couple of seconds.
Corporate Sandbox is a clean and light theme, ideal for corporate blogs. It’s also a great starting point for developing future Wordpress themes. Designers can use this theme as a canvas for their creative ideas.
Preview Theme|Download Corporate Sandbox (167) -
Feel free to leave your feedback or questions in the comments. I would love to know what you think about this theme. This is version 1.0, so version 1.1 will incorporate all your feedback.
LATER EDIT: I fixed the IE6 and Safari issues and made some other small tweaks. You can download the valid, cross browser version using the above link.
This blog now runs on Wordpress 2.5. Once again, the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade came in handy and saved me a lot of time. I’ll be back with a thorough review of all the new features in Wordpress 2.5, cause there are some pretty cool ones!
For now, I just want to give you a quick tip: in case you have an older version of the WPAU plugin installed (for example I had 0.8), you will probably encounter some problems when trying to use the new Automatic Plugin Upgrade feature.
If you get an error saying something like Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class pclzip in …, don’t panic. Just upgrade WPAU to the latest version using FTP. Everything should work fine after that.
Looks like my tutorial on how to customize Wordpress widgets with CSS was quite popular. One of my readers asked me if there’s a way to add round corners to Wordpress widgets. The answer is: of course! 
There are many ways to implement rounded corners using CSS and images. In this tutorial, I won’t be using the best or the most flexible one. I’ll be using a technique that allows people to add rounded corners to widgets without the use of Photoshop or any other graphics program. While this method won’t produce spectacular results, I think it’s the easiest way to add rounded corners, even if you are a Wordpress newbie.
Create the round corner images
Like I said, we won’t need Photoshop or similar. Instead, we will use this web based rounded corner generator to generate the top and bottom images for your rounded corner box.
Scroll to the bottom of the screen, where it says Single RoundedCornr Image. Use the following settings to generate the top image:
- Height: 10
- Width: Put your sidebar width here. If you can’t find that in your theme CSS, try to approximate. You can recreate the image until you have a match.
- Bottom Corners: Square
- Corner Radius: 10
- Solid Color: To help you with this, you can use the ColorSchemer Online Tool. Copy / paste the HEX value when you found the right color.
Leave the rest as it is and hit Generate RoundedCornr. If you like what you see, download the image, rename it to rounded_top.gif and place it in your theme’s images folder.
Hit your browser’s Back button and repeat the same process, but using Top Corners: Square. Save the file as rounded_bottom.gif.
Adding the CSS
Go to Presentation > Theme Editor and paste the following in your styles.css:
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.widget {
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background: #FF9900 url(images/rounded_bottom.gif) no-repeat bottom left;
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padding-bottom: 10px;
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}
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.widgettitle {
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background: url(images/rounded_top.gif) no-repeat top left;
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padding: 10px 10px 0 10px;
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}
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.widget ul {
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margin: 0 10px;
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list-style: none;
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}
Use your chosen background color instead of #CCCCCC.
Last comments
- In case you chose a different corner radius, you must also change this in CSS. So for a corner radius of 5, you should change 10px to 5px everywhere.
- This works out of the box with bulleted list type of widgets, like Latest Posts, Latest Comments, etc. For other widgets (like a text widget) you might need to add some more CSS, for proper alignment.
- For the top image you can even use a gradient. Just be careful to choose two similar colors, otherwise it will look to flashy.
That’s it! Now go and practice. Feel free to comment if you run into trouble and I’ll do my best to help.
