Today we’re pretty excited to launch a new dashboard design to everyone here on WordPress.com.
If you have a few minutes, try clicking around and exploring the new layout and features. It’ll be unfamiliar at first, but like riding a bike you’ll find yourself picking up new habits and cruising down the road in no time.
Those of you who follow the wordpress.org side of things probably saw the sneak peak that included several screenshots, the screencast of the new gallery feature, and the exhaustive list of features from the 2.5 release announcement. Now those improvements are available to you, including a few cool bonuses like a blog switcher menu on top.
Here’s a brief rundown of the features that are relevant to WordPress.com users:
Cleaner, faster, less cluttered dashboard — we’ve worked hard to take your feedback about what’s most important in the dashboard and organize things to allow you to focus on what’s important — your blog — and get out of your way. In collaboration with Happy Cog and the community we’ve taken the first major step forward in the WordPress interface since WordPress.com was created.
Dashboard Widgets — the dashboard home page is now a series of widgets, including ones to show you fun stats about your posting, latest comments, stats, people linking to you, and we’ll allow more customization here soon.
Multi-file upload with progress bar — before when you would upload a large file you’d wait forever, never knowing how far along it was. And uploading more than one photo was an exercise in patience, as you could only do one at a time. Now you can select a whole of folder images or music or videos at once and it’ll show you the progress of each upload.
Now you can put that 3gb of free space to good use!
Search posts and pages — search used to cover just posts, now it includes pages too, a great boon for those using WordPress.com as a CMS.
Tag management — you can now add, rename, delete, and do whatever else you like to tags from inside WordPress.
Concurrent editing protection — for those of you on multi-author blogs, have you ever opened a post while someone was already editing it, and your auto-saves kept overwriting each other, irrecoverably losing hours of work? I bet that added a few words to your vocabulary. Now if you open a post that someone else is editing, WordPress magically locks it and prevents you from saving until the other person is done. You’ll see a message like below.
Friendlier visual post editor — I’m not sure how to articulate this improvement except to say “it doesn’t mess with your code anymore.” We’re now using version 3.0 of TinyMCE, which means better compatibility with Safari, and we’ve paid particular attention this release to its integration and interaction with complex HTML. It also now has a “no-distractions” mode which is like Writeroom for your browser.
Built-in galleries — when you take advantage of multi-file upload to upload a bunch of photos, we have a new shortcode that lets you to easily embed galleries by just putting [ gallery] (without the space) in your post. It’ll display all your thumbnails and captions and each will link each to a page where people can comment on the individual photos. I’ve been using this feature on my blog and have already uploaded over 1,200 pictures into 23 galleries. The shortcode has some hidden options too, check out this documentation.
In light of the launch, we’re also going to be keeping support open this weekend so you can let us know of any issues that pop up as a result of the new design. This new dashboard being out also allows us to roll out some other improvements we’ve been holding off for a bit as they didn’t make sense before. Keep an eye on this blog next week.
March Wrap-up
- 298,194 blogs were created.
- 381,855 new users joined.
- 2,242,997 file uploads.
- 3,225,059 posts and 1,420,975 new pages.
- 5,622,696 comments.
- 4,418,407 logins.
- 636,024,114 pageviews on WordPress.com, and another 347,679,330 on self-hosted blogs. (983,703,444 pageviews total across blogs we know about.)
- 863,470 active blogs, where “active” means they got a human visitor.
WordPress.com News 
the new features are so user-friendly. everything i need to know i get in one page; less clicking so more efficient! way to go!
Drafts used to be sequentially numbered. Now there is just a date and it’s wrong on most of them. Last modified Jan. 1, 1970!
It reminds me of Blog-City and I left Blog-City. Also it’s SLOW! I have to keep stopping the pages and asking them to reload, because it just goes to a blank page or cycles forever. Maybe it’s because I’m using Firefox. (Slow loading was a Blog-City problem too.)
well, we need time & learn to this new dashboard.
old dashboard more familiar for me, but it must be change, isn’t it ?
The support over the weekend was essential to the success of this roll-out. Nick responded promptly to my complaints and things went smoothly from then on. Whatever users may say, it’s an improvement both technically and esthetically. One question: how do I build separate Galleries?
Am I the only sane one here? The upgrades were terrible and illinformed. The people who made the decisions behind them should be canned…. For no reason should there not be an option to revert back to the old style, much like Hotmail did when they changed their look. Matt, I’m sorry bud, good try. But$, give the users what they want: the old wordpress.com.
It’s ok!
Who ever decided to redesign this dashboard should be reprimanded. The issues of simply uploading an image is a failure in concept and time. WordPress should offer users to go to the classic dashboard. We are not flying a plane here.
I was expecting this upgrade, but i can’t edit comment from my friend, there are no ‘edit’ link, can you tell me? reply please…………………
Thanks for a well-organized redesign. I already notice some improved access to bits of information about my posts that will help me manage and plan entries.
Great work!
Awful. Just Awful. You have made it more difficult to post and format our posts the way we want.
I tried uploading a video last night and tonight.
My digital still camera shoots an AVI.
– WordPress says: not supported.
I convert to the common MP4 format.
– WordPress says: “File type does not meet security guidelines. Try another.”
I convert to WMV.
– WordPress says: “File type does not meet security guidelines. Try another.”
What the heck!
Nice new layout of the dashboard 🙂
It was pretty weird at first, but, I like it! 🙂 Great job, guys!
Hi Matt,
The dashboard colors make my eyes bleed… blech. I wish I could set the color scheme back. I like the arrangement though.
I, like others, would have liked the option to keep the old dashboard or use this new one.
I agree that visually, this new theme looks like an older version – it’s a little too basic in appearance, and on a quick glance at the dashboard now, it seems to be a jumbled mess of text. Being able to edit the colours for the different menus would be helpful, so we can create our own themes with the contrast we individually like for these elements. And having them as movable widgets would be great. overall though I can live with it, and I didn’t even know there were blog stats, so that has been interesting.
I really don’t like the new post screen though. I prefer the old categories placement and layout, and same with the tags. While it’s helpful to have tags you’ve used come up like that, I’m finding it’s taking 3 times longer (or more) to tag posts now!… I’d prefer both the empty field to type in tags (I can remember my tags without needing to choose them from a list) and perhaps also a pull down menu of used tags for that option for those who don’t want to type it in. I think all the elements should be moveable widgets too, so people who want to move things about can do so.
I also prefer the old image uploader. I can’t upload images now (keep getting a “HTTP error. (500)”) and I’m trying to upload tiny images (and tried in opera and firefox).
There are some space saving things that could be done, particularly on the new post screen. Like putting the save and publish buttons, or the permalink thing in that title bar, to use up some space.
I look forward to seeing what changes come to this new theme.
i’m a newbie and was just getting the hang of all that dashboard had to offer when you went and changed it…please leave this configuration alone for 90 days or more whilest we newbiess relearn everything we taught ourselves
I also don’t like the way posts now stay open when you click the publish button… I would prefer the option to take you back to the dashboard after posting… and those yellow tips bars, I liked the way they dissapeared after a while in the old version.
I am new at this and had just flailed around with the old dashboard enough to use it without too many flub-a-dubs. Did get my blog working though.
The new one came as a surprise, but I have now used it about as much as I had used the old one.
My conclusion: The new one is way better and much easier to use. Thanks. Still don’t know how you came up with the name “dashboard”. A takeoff on the MS term “control panel”?
What happened to the Spell Checker?
What happened to the word count?
Why don’t you put the text options bar vertically so that it stays with the words being typed? It’s a real pain in the fundament having to go all the way back to the top if you want bullets, or bold or italics, etc.
Otherwise, OK.
It doesn’t look, or feel modern. Sorry.
Ew! Ew! Ew! This is not a “Cleaner, faster, less cluttered dashboard.” Cleaner: no. Way too much stuff is “below the fold” now. Faster: no. This took a full 2 seconds to load. Less cluttered: no. You are crowding everything, both the stuff I use all the time and the stuff I never look at, all onto one page.
Plus the graphic design is gawdawful! The pale blue and bright red color scheme is jarring, and the medium blue-on-white links where we used to have tabs are disorienting and hard to see. This almost as bad as the Amazon.com portal page, which is a textbook case in bad portal design.
Please bring back the old page!
Some likes, some dislikes (PS, Matt, it was great to see you talk at Northern Voice – you were great).
OK, initial dislikes:
“Save” and “Delete” buttons are too close together. Delete button should be harder to get to…
Videos aren’t uploading properly (even though they were fine before)
Likes:
-the easy view of stats (though a bit hard on my ego, it’s really useful)
Design looks cleaner
Hate it! Hate it! Hate it!
I’ve lost the ability to edit the comments… that was one of my fave things. I could go into each comment and reply directly to the person in THEIR comment. Now that’s gone.
Now all I can do is approve, delete or spam? What’s up with that????
Bring back to Edit Comments function please!!!
P.S. I just went to enter a new post – you didn’t just redesign the dashboard. You did the whole UI! Ick! Ick! Ick! The new post page is even worse. All the stuff that used to be above the fold, like categories, that I used all the time is now below the fold. And once I got to the new post page, I literally could not figure out how to get back to the dashboard without logging out and logging back in, or using the browser button?
Do you guys ever do user testing? I work for a web software company, and we do it all the time. We ask really basic questions like, “OK, here’s the new UI. Show me how you would accomplish this task,” and if people can’t figure it out, we figure there’s something wrong with our design.
:: goes off to see if Typepad has a better admin UI ::
Seriously, folks, this is bad.
Thank you….looking good!!
Oh, one more thing – you’ve got an accessibility issue. On many of these pages, your text does not respond to the browser’s text size command. This is a big no-no for the visually impaired. (Examples: Dashboard home page, Manage Posts page, Manage Comments page, Blog Stats page …)
I hate the new design – there’s no explanation of what the new items on the dashboard control.
I guess I’ll like it better as soon as Todd gets in and helps me figure it out.
I haven’t been able to post a photo to my blog today or other things I did with ease in the past.
The new features are cool! Are you gonna change the whole WordPress? New themes would be nice 🙂
Looks awesome! It was like riding a bike at first, but now I love it! Thanks and I really appreciate all the hard work that went into making it a great product!!
Good improvements. Now please enable LiveLeak so we can post it just like Youtube.
Umm….where’d my management of my blogroll go?
Thanks for all of your hard work, WP team! Your system keeps getting better and better.
Also, what happened to the Word Count?
i manage to download pictures form my computer but i can’t inser them
i get a blank page
i’ve tried a few times and it won’t work … i don’t know what to do …. i thin there’s nothing to do but wait until the new dashboard is fully functional
it’s a bit frustrating
I thought that my wordpress blog was attacked by some kind of virus.
Lots to like and obviously a great deal of thought has gone into this…but…I can’t edit existing text in Text Widgets or add new text (only half the edit box is displaying). Don’t like having to paste text into a second window for plain text. Interline spacing on Pages is tighter than on main blog page (at least in Black Letterhead template) and needs to be given leading consistent with main blog page. Hope these glitches can be sorted, soon.
In some ways it is more clean, but in other areas it is cluttered and un-intuitive.
I have a Magazine in Word Press in Castilian.
It was not warned to anybody for the changes. It was not consulted. Not translation exists to the Castilian. The new system works bad. He has gotten lost agility and easiness.
It is a system for English speech. There is a very clear contempt to the blogger rest, and we are enough.
I can’t get my images to show up in the post!
Whatever you did to the visual post editor, it makes it easier for me to use on my home pc now. I figure the pc at work had some upgrades that my home pc did not, so it was always easier to write and edit posts at work. Now it is just as easy at home!
Thanks a lot!!!
This comment is so far down the page, it probably won’t get read. I hate the new dashboard. A lot of things are missing. Now you and Blogspot are just alike.
I cannot edit comments anymore. There is no way for you to respond to comments that have been made on the post. You have taken out the Edit Comments.
Can’t edit posts after they have been published (I found a typo in my post and I can’t edit it).
You can’t insert photos where you want them. You can click and drag them, but what a hassle. And….if you insert them either to the left, the middle, or to the right…that is where they stay.
I am sure I can find out more stuff as the days go on.
I ABSOLUTELY HATE THE NEW DASHBOARD. I WANT THE OLD ONE BACK.
I think if would be really great if you can put category vertically and besides the post. I am one of those blogger who keep on selecting the categories when creating the post. I have to scroll back and forth between them.
Kind Regards,
Pinal Dave ( http://www.SQLAuthority.com )
Only one real problem that I have…before under the “Write” tab you could see breakdown of draft posts waiting in queue to be posted…not you have to go into “Manage” then click “draft” and even then it doesn’t break down by author. Makes queing posts and finding them later much harder
On my first round of browsing, the features are compact and should be easier to manage and it is great. But, I have to tell you this, I hate the colour, maybe you can allow for customisation or can you change the colours to be more vibrant? Thanks!
OK, The new dashboard is better… thank you very much 🙂
Hi! I am adjusting to the new look! But I can’t find the spell checker and word count–Are they still there? Other than that, I think it’s much more user-friendly, clean, and functional.
I try, really, I try!
But I HATE HATE HATE.
Please, give to us the opportunity to use the old one!
On first looks the new dashboard seems to be a nightmare. “less cluttered” “elegant” “cleaner” what!? I have to scroll down to see everything or do another click to see something I could on the first page in the old dashboard.
The old widget dashboard was a simple click and drag affair and now seems to be a nonsense mess that scrolls down for ever. Can you even see a layout of your current widgets on your page anymore?
Speaking of widgets when was the last time a new one was added or a currant one improved?
Hoping the visual editor may be a improvement but have not checked it out yet.
Think I need to self host my page now just so can use better blog editing software.
mmmm….
I like the old design better than the new one….
Okay, another gripe…
There’ used to be an “edit” button for comments,
and,
in other views, the letter “e” which we could click on to edit.
Now there is absolutely NO button or icon or word that provides a visible link to edit a comment.
wtf.
How does this make things easier for new bloggers, like my wife?
How does this facilitate editing in a hurry, where you need to find the button for everything ELSE, but not comments, which use a different interface- you click the commenter’s name to _edit_ the comment.
Whomever thought up that little interface interactivity paradigm needs to be fired.
Putting an “e” on the post (in the theme I have) and then not putting any disparate “edit” link for editing a comment is creating two entirely different interface designs to do the same thing.
That’s bad design.
Anthony Burokas
again.
I hated it first. Mostly because of the red thingie. Then I found how to return it to the old blue and started enjoying the new features. Wish I had more time to re-organize all that media an upload the lot of new ones in my PC.
I’m crying. When I try to edit my widget Text in the side bar, I can only see part of it, and I’m not able to change things. My weakly food menu has been changed, but not the dates, which was impossible.
I also have problems with the pictures. I’m nor very good deleating codes, still I had to.
I hope it will not take me too long to learn all this. I write every day, and now I have spent hours (hours I do not have) to understand.
Just now I just hate it.
i think its a lot better. at beginning i was lost, but now, i find it more practical.
I have the same problem as cmerry above. I can’t put my photos on the blog any more>
It’s slower, the file upload doesn’t seem to work on Firefox, avatar cropping didn’t work in Explorer.
Please, make the fonts larger… they are too small!… wordpress always had LARGE fonts and LARGE buttons, is the issue the we love of WP… large fonts, please…
LOVE it to death, makes my blogging so much easier, thanks for the upgrade
Brilliant guys, nice progression of the ideas of the way the web should be going. I love it I love it I love it. Cheers!
I joined WordPress in March. I posted two times. Didn’t like the site much, or I thought I wouldn’t have. One month later, I’ve posted seven more times, and have gained over 300+ views in a little over two days. I’ve already been featured a time on the front of the WordPress website. I love the new dashboard. I love the WP.com site itself. WordPress is my new favorite website. Thanks, guys. Greatest blogsite ever.
Thanks…this does looks cleaner.
I can’t wait ’til I am comfortable moving around.
Thanks for continuously improving our dashboard!!!
very good work
thanks 🙂 a lot
i was working on my blog when suddenly everything changed. i thought i did something wrong, good work.
how i can ‘edit’ my link without delete my link,
ex: i just change the url, tell me please
I was beginning to regret my mac purchase, but now I can blog without wanting to toss my laptop out the window…thanks!
I think I can get used to the new dashboard, but I really, REALLY miss spell checker…. are we getting that back?
Finally, all the brain cells are now rewired. Just brain cells reorientation and everybody will soon get the hang of the New dashboard. Yes, I agree…the new dashboard is pretty cool indeed!
I really really liked it…! way to go! 🙂 keep it up!
I found it relatively easy to use..! its like having everything within reach… thank you thank you thank you! :*
I miss being sent right back to my dashboard, but once I discovered the ‘tabs’ I was okay with that. The one thing I don’t like is having to scroll past all the widgets (?) (I’m still a bit of a newbie at this) to find my list of recent stuff…I’m encouraged to read that we’ll soon be able to personalize our dashboard.
I’ll take getting use to. BTW-my bike got ran over!
The image upholder is integrated into the write a new post widget as far as I can tell and it would be good if it was separate. Well because sometimes you are just uploading a picture or icon, one you are planing to us as a link in a text widget, and this is annoying. Also the bottom part of the image upholder it dos not seem to load right. Yes it lodes all hidden. And I am using the latest version of Firefox. But other then that I like the new cosmetic changes including the new more easy on the eyes colour scheme.
don’t like it. Color scheme is awful and the new gallery makes thing harder, not easier. And overall, still not working on Safari
Nice design… thank’s
Thanks for all the work you put into WordPress. I appreciate it!
I spent all day just trying to lay out new page…I think I’m doomed here…very complicated now, sorry.
I’m sure the techies will be fine though. No longer user friendly.
I don’t suppose we can have a choice of “view classic format” can we??
That’ds what imageshack did and it really made things easier for us old users.
The new dashboard is not like a bike. This is like asking a Michigan fan to cheer for Ohio State, or Packers fan to cheer for the Bears, or a Trojans fan to cheer for the Bruins, or a Ducks fan to cheer for the Beavers, or a Jets fan to cheer for the Giants, or…Do you understand? I didn’t need more options, I liked the simplicity of the old dashboard. I do not enjoy this extended April Fools prank.
the more i use it – the more i like it
many thanks!
I’m getting use to it.
Thank U for your time n efforts, I have a question though. Will we still be able to choose are own text style? I notice now the only text I can get in when something is saved or published is, “Times New Roman”.
yes but to much lol…great
My spell check is MIA. Other than that, I like the updates.
Oh yes. The Classic colors are so much less glaring. Getting the feel for it. Thanks for the improvements, the streamlining.
I’m not wild about it. Not cast in stone however. What about the word count on posts? I miss that.
I have a LAN with a mix of Microsoft and Linux systems, and an addition of Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers. You’re new “upgrade” has been disastrous for me. Thanks for making yourself the “Microsoft Vista” of blogger interfaces.
Thanks so much! It’s been a pleasure. <- Not.
FF
My first impression of the dashboard was very positive, everything there in one place.
My first posting experience this evening, however, was a bit frustrating. I kept getting script loading problems slowing down my access to the posting page, particularly this seemed to have something to do with the editor features loading.
Any suggestions?
Really bad. Bad lucking and very disorganized.
I’m not happy with the new dashboard, sorry.
Cya!.-
Love it.
I especially love the facility that allows multiple photo uploads and the galary insertion too.
thanks for making it a lot more easier. 🙂
Weii, it’s certainly the right way in the right direction, but can’t be the final version.
Colors and Dashboard are fine but the Menubar isn’t.
In addition to that, it was much more comfortable to have all options of the Editor just on the right side, not below. Now, you must scroll all the time up and down. And it is not clear to me, why some options are still on the right, others below.
Pretty bad is the upload of pics, because alignment seems not to work in the editor. And removing the Radioboxes (Link to …) is not a good idea at all, as you can not detect with one glance, what has been selected.
With the Galerie it is not clear, what can be saved and what can’t be (e.g. Alignment). Pretty confusing.
If you do a Preview in the Editor you do not recognize that a new tapped window opened. Stepping from this window back to Editor doesn’t show your changes done. You do it once more and wonder, what happened. Very confusing.
You wait a long time in order to be able to add pics because of the new pop-up. This is pretty annoying. You should not jump onto Ajax everyway. Ajax is slow and does not make any sense in adding pics.
No, sorry, it is more than one step back. The idea was good, but the usability is pretty bad. I wish, you would do usability-test or a kind of beta-tests (not with technical freaks, but with people, who “use” it).
very good
good work , thanks
Awesome! Thanks a lot folks, you continuously keep on coming up with cool features and stuff.
Where was the head’s up email? I know it’s like riding a bike and I’ll get over it, but I could definitely have used a head’s up. Also, I use the fjords layout and can’t edit/access half my widgets. Super frustrated, not impressed.
OK, I already figured out the widget thing…but I’m still annoyed I didn’t get a head’s up on this!
Nothing- however great it is – is ‘static’, everything is bound to evolve and enhance
towards a new vista of excellence. And the Dashboard of the WordPress is no exception
to that. Now the newly evolved Dashboard is more handy and handsome with more value
added features and facilities. Thanks a lot. Expecting more to come – no end. Change is the only permanent thing in this world, as some wise guy put it.