Page 6: WordPress 2.5 Writing Content

I saved the best for last, the new WordPress 2.5 “Write” tabs. I think they have changed the most, and will be the most positive change for you, once you get used to them. The first time you go to write a new post in WP 2.5 – this is what you’ll see:

Wordpress 2.5 Write Post

Adding media in wordpress 2.5 The first thing you’ll notice is that you have Write “page”, “post” or “link” (which has been relocated here). Next, under the title box for Write Post on the right are some icons for adding media to the “Media Library” we just talked about. But these are no ordinary icons, for instance – when I click on the first one “add image” I get some options in fancy “lightbox” mode like this:

add image lightbox mode options

I can now add an image AND an alt title description, and even choose my alignment so the text floats around it! You can even click on the “Media Library” tab at the top to use existing images. But wait – there’s more! You can also uploade video now!

Wordpress 2.5 upload video or add YouTube URL

And look, now only can you upload video from your computer, but you can also add a URL, like a YouTube URL! No more broken YouTube URL’s yaaaaay! That does away with a half-dozen different plugins out there for managing YouTube links the visual editor won’t break them. Audio files (third icon) have the same option – but I don’t know if they’re displayed any differently than a hyperlink. The last icon is to upload and manage any media that doesn’t fall under the first 3 categories (like a PDF or Office doc).

wordpress 2.5 lookup button Now I’m using the default editor, on this blog I don’t use the Visual editor – so I’ll have to look at that another day. But in my tag buttons above I see one I haven’t seen before which is “lookup”. I wondered what it was so I typed in a word to see what kind of results I would get. I typed in the word “delicious” and hit enter, and a new tab opened with the result from answers.com:

wordpress 2.5 lookup results

Pretty cool, the next time I want to know how to spell a word or a definition I can just do it right from my post! Off to the right is my publish block, which is a little refined, but also I now see “related” links to manage comments, posts, categories, tags, and drafts. Now somebody’s thinking! Manage tags and categories are now below the post, and you can toggle between “all” or “most used”:

wordpress 2.5 manage categories

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