WordPress unveiled a sneak peak at what’s to come in the next version of the popular blogging platform. The biggest change seems to be in the interface of the administration panel. Talk about bad timing.
Wow, I didn’t expect that. As soon as I read that Happy Cog was involved in redesigning the admin panel for WordPress, I knew right away that Leopard Admin was in trouble. Big trouble. The folks at Happy Cog are some of the best in the industry and as expected, they’ve done a fantastic job. I should have seen this coming.
As expected, Leopard Admin completely breaks down in WordPress 2.5 RC1:
I’m not sure what I should do. I’ve delayed the Leopard Admin plugin for so long that it might never see a full release. Here’s the dilemma I face: if I don’t support WordPress 2.5, the plugin is as good as dead. If I do support it, I can’t imagine there being a large demand. People used plugins such as Tiger Admin and SpotMilk to improve the look and feel of their WordPress administration panel. With WordPress 2.5, that improvement is no longer needed.
The good news is only a hundred people have downloaded the current beta of Leopard Admin. I haven’t shared it around the interwebs and so it hasn’t really picked up any momentum. I could kill the plugin right now and it probably wouldn’t have a huge impact on anybody. At the same time, I’ve invested a lot of time and effort into it. It feels like such a waste to just let it go. I’ll have to reevaluate my options and make a decision soon but please help me out. What do you think I should do?
10 Responses to “WordPress 2.5 and the Future of Leopard Admin”
Will Norris
Mar 21st, 2008 at 3:51 am
Yeah… unfortunate timing indeed. It’s definitely worth it for wp plugin developers to stay up with the wp-hackers list as well as keep a svn-trunk version of wordpress running somewhere to see the latest progress first hand.
I was a long time user of Tiger Admin and upgraded by blog to wp2.5-rc1 a couple days ago… there certainly won’t be the same kind of demand for something like leapord admin once wp2.5 releases.
Luis
Mar 23rd, 2008 at 3:00 pm
A lot of people don’t upgrade their wordpress blogs. I think you should at least keep your beta release available for those who will continue to use the current version of wordpress. Other than that, sorry about the Wordpress 2.5 admin news.
Teddy Hwang
Mar 26th, 2008 at 12:22 am
@Will Noris, perhaps I can still get creative with the 2.5 admin panel. I just don’t know if I’ll have the time to create the plugin from scratch all over again.
@Luis, the beta will be available and I’ll probably release a stable 1.0 version for current WordPress 2.3 users.
Dean
Mar 30th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Like Will said its always good to keep up-to-date with whats happening in the world of WordPress. The Admin upgrade has been known about since late last year, as far as I can remember.
I too was a long time users of Tiger Admin, and was disappointed when I first tried to use it with an early svn-copy of WP2.5 only to find that it was very broken. That was about all the convincing that I needed to finally make my own admin theme plugin from scratch (see my site).
If you choose to continue with your Leopard theme, I think you’ll probably find it much easier to start from scratch, they simply changed way too much, classes, ids, structure, the lot.
Diego
Apr 10th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
I would really love to see a version of this plugin for WP2.5 I just found it today and I was so excited until I found out it doesn’t work with the actual WP version… that’s very frustrating, and you are right, it’s seems like a huge wast of time for you if you don’t update it..
Kevin
Apr 11th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
I for one would love to see Leopard Admin for 2.5.
For all previous releases I used to use Tiger Admin, and like others, was disappointed to find out it didn’t work.
The new admin theme is nice but not the best.
For now I use the Fluency Admin plugin but I would like to use Leopard Admin instead. Maybe you could base your new 2.5 plugin on Fluency?
Tema Leopard para a administração do WordPress 2.5 | Vomicae™
Apr 15th, 2008 at 7:50 am
[...] Tema Leopard para a administração do WordPress 2.5 Postado em: 15 de Abril de 2008 Mais um Theme para o WordPress 2.5, em forma de plugin para área administrativa (admin / dashboard), que deixa a interface com cara do sistema operacional da Apple o Mac OS X Leopard. [...]
Mike
Apr 17th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
I for one would love to see this developed for 2.5. I think this looks better.
leksa
Apr 17th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
take a look the fluency admin plugin for Wordpress 2.5.
I think tiger not much diferent with them. So, i believe you or anyone can fixing it up for WP 2.5.
Hope i have time to see on this nice plugin again, fix some broken :)
Michael Nowak
Jun 23rd, 2008 at 3:53 pm
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