WordPress 2.7 Now Available!

WordPress 2.7 is now available! Users with a 2.7 beta or RC version can just go to Tools → Upgrade to get the latest version.

I’m incredibly excited to finally be able to release this to the world. For months, the entire WordPress core development team has been obsessing over this release. We’ve agonized over the smallest of details. We’ve spent long nights refining and tweaking when we should have long ago given up and gone to bed. The people-hours that have gone into this are tremendous, but more than that, we’ve poured our hearts and our souls into this release.

That’s not to say that it’s perfect. Some part of us wants to hoard this release away until we can polish it to complete perfection. But that wouldn’t be fair to you. It’s time to show our work. We hope you like it. We’re incredibly proud of it.

It’s certainly not a small change, especially for the WordPress admin. Change is difficult, even when for the better, so give it a fair trial before judging it. You’ll have developed “muscle memory” for certain tasks, so it will take a little while to rewire your brain. We think that once you’ve given yourself a chance to learn the new positions and functions, you’ll find that you’re a lot faster, and a lot more efficient at managing your WordPress site.

Favorite New Features

Without a doubt, my favorite new feature is comment moderation keyboard shortcuts. It has bothered me for a long time that comment moderation was such a tedious chore. Keyboard shortcuts (and the new inline reply) make it significantly less of a chore.

The new customizable post screen is a close second. I love that I can completely hide away all of the stuff that I don’t use (by clicking the “Screen Options” tab), and keep tags and categories on the right, while increasing the size of my post content box.

The new Publish module on the post screen is a personal treasure of mine. I took point on that, with some excellent design guidance from Jane Wells. It moves the “Save Draft” and “Publish” buttons far apart (a common complaint was that their proximity lead to accidental premature publishing. The Preview button now shows you the most recent changes to your post… not just the last saved version. Additionally, you can preview changes on published posts without those changes being shown publicly (until you’re ready). The Visibility section is new, and contains the functionality of private posts, password-protected posts, and sticky posts. Future posting is a lot more clear now. When you edit the time stamp to point to a future date, the “Publish” button becomes “Schedule.” All these changes were made to make your Publish module function predictably, so that you’re never wondering what happens when you click something.

The new menu system is great. I operate it in folded mode, so that my content can really take center stage.

There are too many new features to mention, and too many enhancements too small to make the features list (such as improved canonical URL support for even better SEO). Give it a try, and let us know what you think!