WordPress 2.7 released 2 days back but I didn’t want to blog about it as soon as it was out because I wanted to try it out for myself before writing a post about it. I had 27 plugins installed on WordPress 2.6.5 and hence I was expecting some of them to break and was prepared to even revert back to the older version, but everything went well and all plugins are working fine now. Some of you must be thinking 27 is a big number for the number of plugins, yeah it is, but I needed all of them to make my blog work my way 
.
2.7 looks nice with the new dashboard from which everything is just a click away. More features that I like about WordPress 2.7 are:
- Customizable modular publishing Interface.
- Comments Threading.
- Comments Paging.
- Ability to reply to comments from the admin panel.
- Ability to download plugins from the admin panel.
- Ability to upgrade themes just like plugins.
- Better greeting statistics.
- Batch and Inline editing of posts.
- Inbuilt upgrader of the WordPress core.
The above is not a complete list of new features that WP 2.7 has, those are the ones that I like and would be the ones that I would make use of to improve my own as well as my readers’ experience with my blog. For a complete list of WP 2.7 features, click here.
What could have been done but left out?
- Inbuilt database backup wizard: Almost all WP bloggers would want to backup their database from time to time. There’s nothing bad than loosing posts or even an entire blog due to failure to do timely backups and as this is a very sensitive issue, a system within WordPress that backups the database by itself or upon the user’s request would have been a great addition. This fact has been certainly overlooked by the WP guys this time. I use WordPress Database Backup plugin to backup my WP DB and would need to continue using this plugin until Matt thinks it’s worthwhile to incorporate the DB backup functionality in the WP core itself. WordPress Database Backup plugin does a very nice work and I have scheduled this plugin to send me backups of my WP DB by email every day.
What plugins could I get rid off now?
As WordPress has provided threading comment capability and a provision to upgrade WP from the admin panel itself, I can get rid of WordPress Thread Comment and WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugins that I had installed earlier on the 2.6.5 version. I haven’t still found out a way to incorporate the native threading comment capabilities that WP 2.7 provides to my theme as yet but once that is done, I can get rid of the WordPress Thread Comment plugin. WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin is already out.
So, if you haven’t still upgraded to WP 2.7, do a backup of your database and files and upgrade to this latest WP. WP 2.7 provides a better user experience and there’s no reason why you should not upgrade to the 2.7 version. You can download WordPress 2.7 here or you can download and install WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin and use this plugin to upgrade to the latest 2.7 version. You can later remove this plugin as WordPress 2.7 has an inbuilt upgrader and you would not need a plugin to upgrade WP 2.7 to any future versions of WP. If you want to see WP 2.7 admin in action before you upgrade, check out the following video:
You might also want to read other posts on the same topic which are more visually appealing than my post. I would recommend reading Harley’s 5 Amazing New WordPress 2.7 Features.
HAPPY BLOGGING WITH WORDPRESS !
