Dear WordPress, version 2.5 is a Goddamned mess

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(Warning: this is a very angry rant. I am using a WordPress version that I do not like in order to write about how much I do not like this WordPress version, so you can imagine how thoughtful and meaningful this is. Skip if you do not like vitriol being spewed in the general direction of web software.)

It hurts me to even write this post in WP itself. That’s how bad this is. Let me just run down a quick few gripes with the new version of WordPress.

- First off, the admin screen is designed entirely in the ever-so-awesome color scheme of bright friggin’ aqua. Allow me to bless you with a screenshot.

wordpress 2.5

Isn’t that purty? No. It’s not. I was used to the soothing mid-range blues of the previous version and now I get this ‘upgrade.’ I’ve only viewed it on my work computer, to be honest, which is running Windows 2000, so I know the gamma is way lower than at home. I can only guess that when I get home and view it under OS X or Ubuntu it’ll go from irritating to blinding.

- Everything is wrong with the editor. Everything. Especially Image Uploads, which now have an apparently-mandatory Flash component. I’ll get back to that in a moment. I’m not the only one having problems with the new layout. The editor, the front page/dashboard, the image uploader; you name it, it doesn’t work for a lot of people. I don’t know who’s doing UI work for WordPress these days, but they seem to be blind, or at the very least functionally unaware of how a lot of people use WP. I’ll be so glad when someone gets a stylesheet available that is close to how the previous version looked, but nothing will be able to get away from the rest of the issues.

- The visual editor doesn’t mess with your code? Yeah, apparently that’s a load of bullshit. Reports abound of it eating people’s code alive, continuing to mess with (both taking away and adding) its own line breaks, rearranging tags… Did you know? If you embed a Youtube video in the HTML editor, then someone saves over it using the visual editor, it has the ability to screw up your entire layout because it rearranges the object and param tags as it sees fit, instead of according to any common damn sense? This existed in 2.4, and as far as I can tell is probably not tested in 2.5. Pardon me for not wanting to find out right away, because the visual editor has been and apparently still is a piece of crap only useful for people who refuse to take the 25 minutes necessary to learn enough HTML to use the HTML editor (which, btw, still has shiny buttons).

Oh, and lest I forget, last time that scenario happened? (The embed video in HTML -> resaved in WYSIWYG one.) It screwed up my webcomic’s layout for 6 hours while I attempted to undo the damage done. Thanks a lot, WordPress.

- The image uploader has a mandatory Flash component that can only be disabled by using a plugin provided in a single support post on the WordPress forums. THE IMAGE UPLOADER REQUIRES FLASH. Okay, I’m all for a media organizer. Maybe it was a much needed time for that. Good going. Of course, you can’t actually upload or organize anything using the media organizer, so maybe that’s yet another big fuck-you from WP to us. Instead you have to upload using the posting interface, which incidentally has moved it to a modal dialog under ‘Add media,’ which overlays my post, which - hey - maybe I wanted to keep editing! But nope, not allowed. And then once I upload my photo, I get this cutesy little ‘uploading’ thing, then - I guess this is WordPress’s word for ‘thumbnailing,’ which the rest of the world is content to use - I am told that it is ‘crunching.’ Apparently ‘crunching’ means ‘hanging forever,’ because this damnable thing refuses to work.

Hey guys: Flash is not interesting. Flash is not cool. Flash should not be embedded into your Goddamned CMS. I’ve dropped the no-flash plugin into my plugins directory, and there it shall stay.

- Put my categories back up on the right side of the page, dammit. Now even at 1280×1024 I have to scroll downwards to pick categories, then scroll back up to keep editing, and so on.

- RSS feeds are including the default ’stupid’ permalink instead of the altered ‘pretty’ permalink I have had set up forever. Why? The hell if I know. Because WP is flipping us all off in code form, I guess.

- Did I mention it’s aqua? It’s aqua. Fuck.

Maybe I’ll start writing my posts in Google Docs. Yes, writing in a word processor is now favorable to writing in WordPress’s posting interface, and that is a sad damned day.

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