For the last couple of years, I’ve been using WordPress for a number of blogs and small websites that I have built. One of the first things I changed was the admin user interface. WP has strengths and weaknesses under the hood, but the admin UI that came with it was never nice to look at. The core developers even hired a supposedly expensive web usability consultancy, happy cog, for a redesign of the admin area of WP 2.5, and all they got was an interface for which there were plugins available even before the release of the version itself. So I suppose it wasn’t too big a surprise when, this summer, rumours and then a special branch of WP (“crazyhorse”) appeared that once again radically changed the admin interface. And now, a couple of weeks prior to the prospective release date of WP 2.7, there are the first visuals of what WP 2.7 is really likely to look. Some elements thereof were already apparent to those using the nightly builds of the software, but there are also a lot of changes that, for the first time, give WP a look that doesn’t hurt my eye but instead allows me to say “Wow!” out of the box.
The funny thing is, though, that, apparently – quoting the WP developer blog – the design has mostly been done by Matt Thomas and Andy Peatling (who is otherwise the buddypress guy at automattic) over the course of the last week. Which – for all the excitement – begs the question: why not earlier?
To have a look at some mockup screens and read even more about this, check out the link below.
Matt Thomas
“‘Wow!’ out of the box” — that’s what we like to hear. :) It’s a little bit radical, but I also feel like it’s a return to our roots in some ways. The past few versions of WordPress went in some interesting directions, and this one is certainly designed more as a web app than a web page, but I hope we kept a sense of understated style that will just make WordPress feel good as a writing tool. The visual design came late in the process, but we’ll be making this real very quickly in the next couple of weeks. Very exciting stuff ahead.
Tobias Schwarz
Hey Matt,
yeah, well, I’m a visual guy and in the past I’ve even written custom admin plugins to make the backend look more appealing – which, luckily, may no longer be necessary with 2.7. Thanks for all your work on this and, moreover, for making decisions that I visually agree with ;).
Matt Thomas
Happy to please, Tobias. :) All visual design is a matter of taste, but hopefully we’ve done something that WordPress users will be happy with (the reviews of the mockups are giving us hope in this regard).