One of the disappointing changes in WordPress 2.5 was the removal of category ID numbers.   I thought this was just a minor oversight, but since the 2.5.1 upgrade this problem still was not addressed.

If you are looking for a category number (this is most often needed for setting up the homepage of Magazine WordPress themes), here is a really easy way you can locate it until the WordPress team adds the category number display we all took for granted before:

1) Go to Manage > Categories.

2) Hover your mouse over the category that you need the ID of.

3) Look in the lower left corner of your web browser for the ID of that category.

Here is a screenshot example:

Hopefully WordPress will again display the category ID in one of the future updates, but thankfully this workaround is really easy.

This weeks batch of WordPress talk includes a number of great posts from the around the blogosphere. It is good to see just how many people are writing about WordPress!

• Bootstrapper has listed their 100 most usable plugins. I’m a sucker for lists like this and hopefully you enjoy them also. It is always fun to see what other peoples favorites are.
• Last week I collected your input on what you’d like to see on WordPress 2.6. It looks like Dan at WPCandy has collected over 30 ideas he’d like to see with WordPress 2.6. Talk about thorough! This list has a lot of great ideas that hopefully the WordPress team sees.
• Noticed some of your favorite WordPress features missing? The WordPress Expert has listed the 5 features removed in WordPress 2.5. Hopefully we can get these back for WordPress 2.6 (if not before).
• ThemeLab has explained how to setup a privacy policy on your WordPress blog. This is crucial for people that monetize their blogs with Google AdSense.

This guest post was written by John of The WordPress Expert, where he writes about WordPress tips, services, themes, plugins, and more.  If you have WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a post for Hack WordPress, please contact us.

The links importer allows you to import links from an OPML file. In previous versions of WordPress, the links importer was located under the Blogroll section. However, with the admin menu redesign in WordPress 2.5, the links importer isn’t even on the menu anymore!

WordPress 2.5 still has a links importer, but you have to go through a few extra steps to get to it:

1. Login to your WordPress admin
2. Click “Write”
3. Click “Link”
4. Look under the “Related” section on the right
5. Click “Import Links”

From there you can use the link importer like you would in WordPress 2.3.

Funny that the links importer still uses the term “Blogroll,” even though it’s been changed to “Links” in other parts of the administration.

If you don’t have a lot of coding knowledge, you probably find that you use widgets a lot for your sidebar content.  I know many bloggers have come to rely on widgets and now WordPress 2.5 has changed some things.

If you would like to learn how to use widgets in WordPress 2.5+, I recommend you check out the WordPress 2.5 Sidebar Widgets Guide over at WordPress Max.  He does a good job of getting you used to the new look and feel of the new WordPress widgets system.

I think maybe yesterday the WordPress crew was just trying to throw us off with the release of WordPress 2.5 RC3, because today at WordCamp Dallas, Matt Mullenweg announced that WordPress 2.5 is now available. The fact that the official release coincides with WordCamp almost seems planned.
Anyway, in order to get your copy, head over to WordPress.org, check out the new redesign, and upgrade your blog software!  Then come back here and share your thoughts on the new look and other changes.

WordPress.com users should have the upgrade within a week (though don’t expect it the next few days while the entire team is in Dallas).