Wordpress 2.7 – First look and impressions!

Yesterday, the much awaited Wordpress 2.7, code named ‘Coltrane’, was released to the general public and avid bloggers that were waiting to pounce on the stable release. Though I knew it’s a bit too early to try it out, I decided to upgrade and test it on my fairly new blog What’s Happening? – Broadcast right now!

Since it’s a new blog (not even a month old!), it didn’t have many posts, and none of the posts used custom fields nor images. So, in the event of something going wrong with the upgrade, I can just do a quick restore from the XML file that I had exported earlier.

So, what’s new in Wordpress 2.7 – for a casual or non-tech-savvy user? Quite a lot, I must say! A couple of them being significant, in my opinion. It has underwent a major cosmetic change in the admin interface, leading to more a functional flexibility.

The dashboard now gives a brief but broader view of the contents of the blog (see screenshot below).

As you can see from the picture above, the conventional horizontal sidebar is gone, only to take a vertical orientation. I don’t know why, but it reminds me of the old collapsible Slashdot menu.

The New Post link is placed on the top right part of the admin interface, enabling easy access to Drafts, New page, Upload media and Comments. Now you don’t have to click on ‘Manage‘ and shuttle between pages, posts, comments, etc.

Also, if you click on Screen Options you can select or de-select things that you want to be displayed on the dashboard. Well, to me, all of them are required !!

There are two significant additions to this version of Wordpress that did not exist in its previous versions. One, search and install plugins without leaving your admin interface, and two, one-click UPGRADE!!

You can also see the ratings for the plugins, along with the install link!

Thank the developers! Now we don’t have to go through the upgrade process by reading the guide(s) line-by-line, adding/deleting/preserving files and directories, and finally uploading the latest version to the server. Phew!!

So, the new version of Wordpress definitely has some essential goodies that makes life easier for the webmaster and the lay-user. However, I feel that the admin interface (when not in Turbo mode!) has become too very overloaded that it is painfully slow in moving from one menu function/page to the other. Anyways, the developers at Wordpress will find a way to speed-up the interface.

Tags: 2.7-screenshots, coltrane, first-look, review, screenshots, wordpress, wordpress 2.7, WP 2.7

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