I know the latest release of WordPress, v2.5 is not officially out but I have been running WordPress 2.5 from their Subversion repository trunk for about the last week. My initial thoughts on the 2.5 release are very positive and all of my plugins and themes have worked without any major changes. Most plugin and theme authors are already busy upgrading their stuff to the latest code.

Some of the new features include a customizable dashboard, multi-file upload, built-in galleries, one-click plugin upgrades, tag management, built-in Gravatars, full text feeds, and major performance improvements. Apparently, the Automattic crew has been working with the folks at Happy Cog — Jeffrey Zeldman, Jason Santa Maria, and Liz Danzico — to redesign WordPress from the ground-up. The result is a new way of interacting with WordPress that will remain familiar to seasoned users while improving the experience for everyone. It’s more than just a new CSS – it’s a very nice redesign of the user interface that may require a little time to get familiar with, but it’s worth the effort as the new interface is very user-friendly, slick, and powerful.

Do this at your own risk as this is still pre-release software, but if you want to run the latest development trunk of WordPress, use the checkout command (svn co) to get the latest code and then an update once you get the latest code to make sure you are getting the latest code (svn update).

svn update
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