I’m just curious if any plugins or such have taken advantage of the admin color scheme switcher in version 2.5 yet? I’d like to highlight some in the plugin directory.
I’m just curious if any plugins or such have taken advantage of the admin color scheme switcher in version 2.5 yet? I’d like to highlight some in the plugin directory.
Not yet ^^
But I’m planning to do some two or three cutomization (may be next week 🙂 )
Personally, I’d rather see plugins that allow you to move the Admin screen widgets around to organize the screen as the blog-owner wishes to see it, like in 2.3 … if not having that capability built BACK into WP.
Color schemes … meh.
Flahute, if there’s market demand for it, it’ll happen. Some people are pretty set in their ways and have had trouble adjusting, but the new admin really is better and faster to use, you just have to develop the same muscle memory and comfort that you had before, which will take a few weeks.
I too would be interested in seeing if anyone has taken it upon themselves to whip up a new color scheme.
Unfortunately, not yet. I’ve been too busy trying to write a plugin so that picture uploads in 2.5 don’t take 11 steps as it does out of the box and take more like the 6 steps required back in 2.3.3. 😉 Once I get that figured out I’ll get working on color preferences. Hopefully I’m missing something. Here is the manual I wrote for people on how to insert an image into a post and how it has changed for 2.5:
Instructions to upload a photo and insert it into a post:
2.3.3
1) Click Choose File
2) Select File
3) Click in title field
4) Type title
5) click upload
6) click ‘send to editor’
2.5
1) Click Add an Image
2) click ‘Choose files to upload’
3) Select File
4) Click in title field
5) Type title
6) Scroll to bottom of popup window (button hidden at first)
7) click ‘Save All changes’
8) click ‘Gallery’ tab
9) click ‘show’
10) click ‘thumbnail’
10) scroll to bottom of popup (button hidden at first)
11) click ‘Insert into Post’
Tim, you can insert directly after upload, no need to save and bounce to gallery.
There’s a tutorial out there on the subject, but no plugins on it yet. I’m working on a few myself. Excellent feature, btw.
This surely is a nice and exciting new feature of WordPress 2.5. I wonder what can be achieved with future plugins and modifications.
I don’t know about any colour switching, but one thing’s for sure, the new admin interface has given me a renewed taste for writing. 🙂
there is one here
http://planetozh.com/blog/2008/03/per-user-custom-stylesheet-in-wordpress-25/
I guess I don’t understand how to upload an image then. I click ‘Choose files to upload’ -> (pick the file and wait to upload) -> then there is nothing to ‘insert into post’. The only options are ‘choose files to upload’, a field to change the title, and a ‘save all changes’ button.
I’m with Flahute on the admin panel. I could careless about colors until I can start posting again without worrying about forgetting categories and such. So I guess I’m the opposite of Ara in the sense that I have lost my will to write with the new admin panel (at least on the one blog I bothered making the update on and realized I hated it).
Matt said: “Tim, you can insert directly after upload, no need to save and bounce to gallery.”
Actually the “Insert into Post” button doesn’t ALWAYS show up right after upload. Meaning you do have to click “Save,” go back, then click the image to make the button show up. This may be a browser compat issue.
Flahute said: “Personally, I’d rather see plugins that allow you to move the Admin screen widgets around.”
I agreed! And THANKFULLY there is a plugin for this! http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/dashboard-widget-manager/
Bryan, there’s a bug with some web servers that cut off the AJAX replies. We already have a workaround in core.
I’m with Flahute–being able to move the widgets around is what I want to be able to do!
I’m all about color. I’ll have to check that one out at planetozh and any others that come along. Any unique color schemes for the admin area are perfect for my photoblog. It will put me in the creative color frame of mind. WordPress 2.5 rocks!
I haven’t made any new colour schemes, but I have made a new interface for the admin panel which removes some of the extraneous junk which isn’t necessary for use as a static CMS. It’s called “Simple CMS“. AFAIK it was the first plugin for WordPress 2.5 in the official directory which modifies the admin panel.
I think more importantly than new colour schemes, will be new layouts. The old tiger theme was very popular and I was a big fan of the admin dropdown menu. Anything which lets me get to everything as quickly as possible would be nice.
I can see why the admin panel was designed the way it is. It is quite intuitive and hence easier for noobs, but those of us who use their admin panel on a regular basis are more likely to appreciate super fast access rather than having to click multiple times to reach your destination.
I find I’m a lot faster with the new admin because, for example, almost every important page is linked from the dashboard now.
I’ve discovered that the new image uploader consistently publishes the full size image when I select Medium, and publishes the medium size image when I select Full. It does this across the ten or so wp 2.5 installs I’m playing with.
Have you tried getting help on the WP support forums? Or if you’re interested in helping out, contribute some time and debugging on the wp-testers mailing list. I’m not sure if you’re running into a bug or if there’s some sort of human or configuration error. (And my comments are not the place to figure out.)
I presume you saw the example one linked here. Horribly ugly (intentionally so), but I’m endlessly amused by the Brazilian flag in the admin color scheme chooser.
What I’d like to see is themes come bundled with their own admin color schemes (to sort of match the theme).
Just a quick question which I can’t seem to figure out an answer to.
Are we allowed to do multi uploads? Because it seems to be a chore having to select a picture one by one, it would be much better if I can select all the pictures I want to upload and let the process run.
Darran, WordPress 2.5 has multi-upload, that’s what I use to make my galleries. However because it’s on the bleeding edge of browser/flash/server technology, it isn’t available to everyone on every setup, just those on fairly up-to-date systems.
I have to admit, I was a little put off by the new admin design, but the more I use it the more I like it. As always, I like some things better than others, but it’s mostly good/better.
@Matt:
It’s not the entire admin panel that is bad. I agree it’s less cluttered and easier to get around, but scrolling just to add the category, tag, etc…is a major turn-off. I think the basic user doesn’t care about the stuff in the sidebar now, published status or not because most of the time when I type, I publish, or just click save, which was no problems being at the end.
Just saying that having an option of what works best for the user to write should be more of a priority than color scheme. It’s more useful at least.
Melissa, this post on my personal blog isn’t setting the priority for future WP releases, just something I’m curious about seeing more of. I’m sure someone will come out with a plugin that puts the categories wherever you want them, and the feedback you’ve expressed is something that has been heard many times before and will be incorporated into version 2.6. Our initial evidence suggests that the new category placement hasn’t impacted usage negatively, but it’s definitely something that seems to be a banner issue for people unsatisfied with parts of the new admin. We’re always open to new ideas for layout and interface, and some interesting ones have already been proposed. Onward and upward. 🙂
I have a really simple color scheme plugin here: http://smithsrus.com/downloads/wordpress-admin-color-fresh-plus-visited/
It just adds a visited link color to the Fresh scheme to make it easier to see which news items you’ve already read in the dashboard.
I do not find the new Image Upload routine all that difficult to use. A couple of my blog staff did experience a bit of difficulty when using IE to try a few photo uploads. Switched them to Firefox and the difficulty went away.
My main gripe is that if I want to flick from editing a post to creating a new page it is a two click process. I would prefer to have access to those functions via a single click.
I quite like the new Fluency theme. I haven’t installed it yet as I heard it had a few bugs in it, but once it’s bug free I might give it a go as the screen shots look very nice and (most importantly) functional.
Big kudos to the WordPress team on adding all those ID selectors to the elements in the admin panel too. It makes it a lot easier to manipulate the look of the panel. I was surprised how easy it was to remove/restyle the various chunks of the page with a little CSS.
Sorry for the multiple posts …
If anyone out there has any handy links to tutorials or examples of how to manipulate the HTML of menus in the admin panel, I’d love to see them.
Depending on how awkward it is, I may make a plugin to add a flyout or dropdown menu to an admin theme (possibly Fluency) for rapid access to ALL of the different admin pages.
I’ve played with the colors a bit, but I haven’t plugified them yet. I suppose I could take a bit and do so. I just figured people would jump right on it so I sat back.
Matt I have to agree I think the new set up does speed things up quite a bit for me. The image upload everyone keeps having troubles does occasionally cause me to stumble but I’m getting used to it and trying to keep track of the “glitches” and nuisances I find.
I’ll let you know when I have this ready.
Matt said: “Bryan, there’s a bug with some web servers that cut off the AJAX replies. We already have a workaround in core.”
Excellent! Thanks Matt.
@Ryan: Check out the Lighter Admin Drop Menus plugin. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lighter-admin-drop-menus/
I use it myself and it’s a real click-saver IMHO.
That reminds me of something, off topic and this isn’t really the place for it, but: can you please get someone to change the CSS for the wordpress.org support forums so you can see which links you’ve visited? It drives me nuts trying to remember what I’ve looked at when I’m browsing through threads trying to find solutions to problems.
Matt,
Do you have any tips or posts that explain how you migrated from gallery to wp-gallries ?
I’d like to move from wpg2 🙂
Cheers
I have not worked on that yet. But after I am finished with my custom wordpress theme I’ll think about toying around with it. I’m not that much of a dedicated wordpress fan but I do like the software and think its the best.
…the new admin really is better and faster to use
I respectfully must disagree, Matt. For the first time I find myself forgetting to assign categories to posts because the categories are out of sight and two blocks of admin-stuff below the writing area. To get there I have to scroll, whereas before the categories were right in the sidebar. That’s inefficient on two levels (having to scroll and having to go back to edit posts when I’ve forgotten to add a category).
Just from a design point of view, the categories list is a narrow, tall element, but it’s been allocated to a slim, wide space. What a waste of admin space! The sidebar space is now taken up with the “related” items which so far I’ve never used. I can’t imagine any circumstances in which I’m likely to need to go direct from writing a post to editing all tags, for example.
In light of all this, the ability to change the colors on the admin area seems like a monumental waste of time.
The admin looks pretty, but I think it needs rearrangement. Hopefully there will be plugins that make the admin area more workable.
And my wife has been trying, without success, to upload an image for over a week now. I prefer to FTP images so I hadn’t even tried to figure it out myself. When I took a look this morning I had about six false starts before I managed to get a picture into a post. I can’t imagine how newbies would fare.
While its not a colour scheme my Fluency plugin does change the color of the WordPress admin…and the layout. I’m looking at adding a matching ‘color scheme’ in the next version so that IE6/7 users will at least be able to get something out of it.
http://deanjrobinson.com/projects/fluency-admin/
@Ryan, Fluency already supports Ozh’s admin drop down menus, and support for Yellow Swordfish’s plugin will be in the next version.
I actually quite like the new admin layout, and the new color scheme isn’t terrible, other than the burnt orange (but I’m sure you’re tired of hearing that).
With a combination of Andy Staines’ admin menus plugin, custom admin CSS from Ozh, and the Dashboard Widget Manager from Viper007Bond, now I can make the admin section look and (more importantly) work as I want it to.
Maybe part of the disconnect is that we WordPress users have gotten used to flexibility on the front end and want to see it on the back end as well.
That is to say, this is a good problem to have.
Matt, in my opinion, new admin panel requires only a few hours (really minutes) to adjust.
Maybe widgets are confused, but I don´t use them. 😉
Good stuff. Glad it’s planned for future releases.
I’ve been using Dean’s Fluency plugin http://deanjrobinson.com/projects/fluency-admin/ on some of my blogs and so far it has worked well. I like the grays. Great plugin Dean.
Hey Dean! Your stuff is very cool, would love to see more follow your lead.
I think you’d see more alternate colour schemes if there were fewer freakin’ colours involved. I’ve just been trying to tweak the wp.com dashboard, and the number of shades that are indistinguishable to the human eye yet have different hex codes makes it a nightmare. OK, so maybe I was naive to think it could possibly be a straightforward find/replace job , but still. I’ve yet to check whether .org installations have the same issue, though since .org users can use Fluency I’m much more interested in screwing with .com.
TGA, I thought most of that was fixed when we broke out the color into their own stylesheets (fresh and classic), but if not feel free to file bugs in Trac and we can get that fixed up for 2.5.1 and WP.com.
The new admin looks lush but I am itching to have a crack at changing the colours. (Annoyingly) I wanted to chip in on the topic of the image uploader too. Sounds like there are a couple of people with similar gripes ie, too many steps before you get to insert your image into your post, buttons that sometimes only appear after you have saved an image and random resizing of pics (full size reduces the actual image size by 50 pixels… which is just wierd). Sorry about the very minor gripe. WordPress still rules. 🙂
What do you define a fairly up to date system? I really wish I could use the multi upload.
Thanks Dean and Ping!
Not yet finished, but I just want to make it for fun… Not yet finished.
It’s here: http://orangescale.net/goodies/dashmatt/
Thanks to Planetozh for the tutorial! 😀
I haven’t gotten around to “publishing” it anywhere yet (or testing it extensively, but I have a simple plugin written that just checks a specific directory for additional admin color schemes then makes them available for use in the admin panel.
It hasn’t been tested extensively (at all :P), but it worked for me. If anyone is interested feel free to email me for now and I’ll send a copy.
Even though the color schemes are a nice touch, I would rather see improvements to the functionality of the admin interface…
The sidebar manager for instance, could be a LOT better…
I’ve posted my 2 cents about them before though, I guess I could look into colors. Pretty is nice, but not needed.
Bryan said: “I agreed! And THANKFULLY there is a plugin for this! http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/dashboard-widget-manager/”
This only allows you to re-arrange sections on the main dashboard page. I’m looking for something to allow me to re-arrange the various sections on the WRITE page; like you could in 2.3
I hate being forced to scroll.
Challenge accepted: The Under Construction Admin Color Scheme is now available in the Plugin Repository.
It’s bold, it’s garish, it’s sooo 1996, and it’s certainly not the best example of that the Color Scheme mechanism can accomplish, but it does exist, at least.
Flahute – Ah, I misunderstood. I completely agree with that as well!
Hey Matt, I love your work! I’ve been following you for quite some time. Anyway…
This is quite the coincidence… I was just finishing up a plugin related to this very subject when you posted this. It’s not in the repository yet (still waiting for approval) but here is a link to it in the meantime:
http://www.jamesdimick.com/creations/easy-admin-color-schemes/
It hasn’t been well-tested on many setups yet, but from the testing I have done it all works perfectly.
Just thought you might be interested…
Sorry for the double-post, but I just wanted to update you. It is now in the repository. You can find it here:
http://www.wordpress.org/extend/plugins/easy-admin-color-schemes/
Again, just thought you might be interested. 🙂
Maybe I’m a little late for this comment, but I’m playing too with them.. Hope you’ll like it 🙂
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/css-greyscaper/