New in Craft CMS 2.5

New control panel

The control panel has been completely redesigned. The main menu now sits in a sidebar on the left instead of a bar at the top, making better use of space on all screen sizes. Grid items have animations, element editor HUDs are roomier, and asset thumbnails now display their real aspect ratio instead of being cropped into squares.

Dashboard

Widget management now lives on the dashboard itself. Everything happens in place – no separate settings screen needed.

Customizable element indexes

The entries sidebar is now fully configurable. Sources can be created, renamed, reordered, and grouped, and each one has its own column layout.

This means you no longer have to stick with Channels, Structures, and Singles in the sidebar. You can organize content however you like, such as by Company or Services. The news section can display featured images in the overview, and editors see only the information they need for their work.

Craft Personal: unlimited sections

Craft Personal now supports unlimited sections. Before, the free edition was too restricted for most real projects. That changes with 2.5.

Creating entries directly from selector modals

Previously, if you wanted to link a new entry in an entries field, you had to leave the page, create the entry, come back, and then link it. Now, with version 2.5, you can use the "New Entry" button right in the modal. The same goes for categories. It may seem like a small change, but it saves a lot of clicks for editors every day.

Plugin changes in 2.5

Plugins received a major upgrade: icons and descriptions in the control panel, links to documentation, and update notifications via a release feed. Plugins are no longer invisible backend components. They are visible products in the control panel.

Extended query options

Three useful additions for templates:

• AND-based relations – relatedTo: {elements: ['and', 1, 2, 3]} finds entries related to all of the specified elements
• :notempty: and :empty: on Matrix and relational fields – for example, "show all entries with at least one Matrix block"
• searchScore attribute on query results for sorting by relevance

New Twig filters

• |camel, |pascal, |snake – string formatting
• |hash – HMAC signing for secure form data
• |values – array values with reset keys

More additions

• Assets field view mode setting: list or large thumbnails
• Site icon: custom icon in the CP sidebar
• Emoji support in Rich Text fields
• Three new languages: Danish, Hungarian, Turkish – Craft now supports 20 languages
• Craft Client to Pro upgrade reduced from $129 to $100

Craft Commerce 1.0

Craft Commerce 1.0 launched alongside Craft 2.5. For $999, you get both Craft 2.5 and Craft Commerce, so you can build a complete online store with Craft. If you only need Commerce, it's available for $700.

Because Commerce is built on Craft, you still get features like live preview, custom fields, Twig templating, and one-click updates.

My take

Craft 2.5 feels more like a relaunch than just an update. The new control panel shows that Pixel & Tonic is ready to improve even the things that already work well. Unlimited sections in the free edition make Craft accessible to more users. Plugin icons, release feeds, and update notifications bring the plugin ecosystem into the spotlight. And with Craft Commerce, Craft is entering a whole new market.