I guess WordPress doesn’t consider the changes they’ve made in 2.7 (released today) to be big enough to warrant a change to the major version number (which would make it 3.0). However, there are a few features now built-in that I’ve been dreaming about for so long that simply incrementing the second number seems to sell this version short. At least they named it after one of my favorite jazz musicians. This release is called “Coltrane”. Nice.
My top two feature requests: Check!
First and foremost, the number one thing on my list of desired features is now a reality: I can make bulk changes to the categories of my posts. So, when I add a category to WordPress, and then realize that lots of my old posts really belong there, I don’t have to go searching around and changing them by hand. I still might take a stab at doing back-end automation here, by scripting a tool that’ll search the content of all of my posts, and if the content has, say, 2 out of 3 terms in my search criteria, it’ll add the post to the category, using whatever database trickery is necessary. However, this solves almost all of my needs (save my need to hack things, sometimes for its own sake).
The other feature I’ve been wanting for a long time is also now a reality: replying to comments without having to go to the post page to do it. You can now moderate and reply to comments right in the dashboard.
This, for me, is huge. I’ve been waiting for these two particular features since about 2005.
More Baked-in Goodness
Some other niceties are now built-in that used to be addon modules in WordPress, which is great, because I’m always worried about third-party modules breaking and being abandoned as new WP releases come out. The nicest for me, as someone who maintains their own wp install, is the automated WP upgrade. Used to be an addon, now built in.
Another nice feature, if you *are* someone who doesn’t mind third party modules, is that now you can browse available modules, and install them, without leaving the wp interface.
Yes, another complete redesign
The admin interface has been completely overhauled, again. The last time they did this, a buddy and I discussed it, and although he felt one or two things were nicer, I felt that they had not addressed the biggest problems with the interface. Well, they fixed it by doing something I didn’t actually expect: they admitted defeat.
Instead of overhauling the interface, they’ve empowered the user to do it for themselves. Want the editor to fit the width of the browser window? No problem. Never use all of those features in the editing interface? Get rid of them. Only just noticed all those news items in the dashboard? Make them more prominent. You can do all of this by dragging and dropping things around, or collapsing them to ‘icon-only’ view.
I am writing this in 2.7, and in the editor interface, I definitely feel like more of what I need is readily available instead of buried somewhere in the countless blocks and sections and whatnot – which reminds me that there’s also a new (and quite nice) menu interface – also a part of the interface you can customize.
Check out the video and notes on the WordPress site. The tour video does a great job of giving a quick rundown of the new features I’ve mentioned here, and lots and lots of features I *didn’t* cover.