WordPress 2.7, First Impressions

After making the effort to upgrade WordPress to 2.6.5 on the December 9th, the WordPress team turned around only days later and released version 2.7 – which has had a lot of tongues wagging. Not wanting to be left behind again, I’ve already upgraded and my initial impression is that it’s fantastic.

While I’m sure there are many under the hood improvements in WordPress 2.7, the most noticeable to everyone is going to be the administration area – which has been completely reworked. The biggest difference with version 2.7 has been the development process that the core team have gone through, it has been very iterative and has had constant feedback from the community while it’s been happening. Not surprisingly then, the overwhelming response to the new administration area in WordPress is very positive.

I’ve only had it installed for a short time, however the things that make it worth the upgrade personally are:

  • Vastly improved navigation
  • Customisable on-screen components – move them around or just turn them off if they don’t interest you.
  • Contextually relevant navigation depending on what your mouse is over, which has reduced the clutter
  • Optional inline editing of many elements, such as posts & comments
  • Appearances count and the tight styling between elements is noticeable
  • Dashboard has been improved yet again and now offers a ‘quick press’ if you just want to jot something down fast

No doubt I’ll find a bunch of other really great features in the coming days and weeks but I’m quite rapped about the enhancements to WordPress in this round of development.