WordPress 2.7 Beta 2 is available for download now and I’ve been testing out some of the new features. In this post I’ll demonstrate the subtle but useful changes to the time and date settings in WordPress 2.7.
In WordPress 2.6 the time and date settings look like this.
In WordPress 2.7 the time and date settings now look like this.
The Date Format and Time Format settings now make several common formatting options selectable, while still keeping the option to choose a custom format. This is much easier than having to refer to the formatting documentation when choosing a format, especially as most people would use one of the new selectable ones anyway.
WordPress 2.7 Beta 2 is available for download now and I’ve been testing out some of the new features. In this post I’ll demonstrate the plugin management features of WordPress 2.7.
The plugin admin interface can be accessed from the dashboard using the sidebar. Each of the plugin management interfaces is grouped under “Plugins”. Clicking on either “Plugins” or “Installed” will take you to the same page.
The Manage Plugins page will list all installed plugins, grouping them together as Active or Inactive. On a new installation of WordPress only the Akismet and Hello Dolly plugins are installed, and each is inactive. Clicking the Plugin Browser/Installer link will take you to the Install Plugins page.
The Install Plugins page offers you several ways to view and install plugins. You can search the WordPress Plugin Directory based on a term, author, or tag. You can also view one of many popular tags such as “Flickr” and “AJAX”, or upload a plugin in a zip file to be installed. This new upload capability negates the need to use an FTP client to upload plugins to your WordPress blog.
Installing plugins from the WordPress Plugin Directory
To install a new plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory first search for a keyword that will help you find a suitable plugin. In this example I want to find a plugin to help me write series of posts.
The search results will display all of the plugins in the directory that match the keyword “series”. I want to install the “In Series” plugin, so I simply click the “Install” link on the right side of the search results.
This opens a lightbox popup containing the WordPress Plugin Directory information for In Series as well as a link to install the plugin on my WordPress blog.
When a new plugin is installed it is not automatically activated, however you can do this by clicking the link on the installation results page.
The Manage Plugins page also lets you perform bulk actions against your plugins. You can select the check boxes next to several plugins and either activate, deactivate, or delete them by choosing the action from the dropdown list and then clicking Apply.
The new WordPress 2.7 plugin management interface makes it much easier to install and manage plugins on your WordPress blog. You no longer need to browse to the plugin directory, download zip files, FTP them to your web host, and then log in to your blog and activate them. For people that like to test many plugins on their blogs this will be a great time saver.
WordPress 2.7 Beta 2 is available for download now and I’ve been testing out some of the new features. In this post I’ll discuss the new dashboard features revealed by Beta 2.
1. QuickPress
QuickPress appears in the top right of the new dashboard and is a new way to fire off a quick blog post with just basic text, images and tags without having to load the full WordPress visual editor. If you need access to formatting or plugin features you can use QuickPress to save a draft post and then edit it later in the full visual editor. This is great for short “newsy” posts or bloggers who frequently need to just copy/paste a draft blog post from another writing application that they plan to edit and improve later.
2. Recent Drafts
Just below QuickPress is the Recent Drafts section. For bloggers that like to draft posts and come back to them later before publishing this is a much faster way of jumping in to the visual editor for a draft post compared to the old method of navigation.
3. Recent Comments
Access to recent comments is provided for quick comment moderation. Depending on their comments policy this may be good for small blogs with few comments but more popular blogs with hundreds of comments per post might find it to be no help with their comment burden.
4. Plugins
A new plugins view has been added to the dashboard. It will display information about new and popular plugins and might help some bloggers find out about new plugins that interest them. Each plugin listed has an install link next to it that launches a lightbox window of the plugin page from the WordPress Codex and gives you the opportunity to install it to your blog.
5. Sidebar
One of the most visible changes to the new WordPress 2.7 admin interface is the relocation of menu items from the top of the page to the side of the page. This new sidebar is visible in all of the administrative pages and contains expandable sections so that you can keep your most commonly used features exposed and collapse other features that you rarely use to remove clutter.
6. Dropdowns
There are two dropdowns at the top of the dashboard. The first offers you quick access to three of the most commonly used features of a WordPress blog - posts, pages, and comments. Although with the new sidebar also available for quick access to these features this dropdown may be redundant.
The second dropdown lets you customise the sections of the dashboard that are visible. If for example you do not allow comments on your blog then you can remove the Recent Comments section. Similarly if you’ve got several blogs and don’t want to see the latest WordPress news on the dashboard of each one you can disable this as well.
Summary
Although this is still Beta 2 I would expect to see the dashboard remain unchanged between now and the full release of WordPress 2.7 as most development focus now is on bug fixes. The last time the WordPress user interface was changed significantly it was not well received by many WordPress users, however this time I think the changes are all well worth the minimal transition effort that will be required by bloggers.
Akismet is the WordPress comment anti-spam plugin developed by Automattic, the same company behind WordPress. And now with the release of Akismet 2.2.1 it includes stats to show you how well it is working on your blog.
If you are not using Akismet yet…
If you’re not using Akismet yet and spam comments are a problem for you then you should definitely consider enabling it. I recommend enabling Akismet as one of the first things to do with any new blog. Check out my post here to see how to enable Akismet.
If you are using Akismet, time to upgrade!
If you log in to your WordPress dashboard it will notify you of the availability of the updated plugin (assuming you’re running version 2.6 or above - if you’re not, check out my post here).
Click on the little red alert balloon to go to your plugin admin page, and then click the link below Akismet to upgrade automatically. It only takes a few seconds.
New Akismet stats
Your blog dashboard will now have a link to your Akismet stats.
The stats will include the entire history of the plugin’s operation on your blog, so you can see straight away what it has been doing for you since you first enabled it. Here is the graph from one of my blogs showing how effective Akismet can be.
A few weeks ago I wrote about how you can spell check your blog for free with Spellr.us. To recap, Spellr.us is an automated spell check tool for websites. You can use it to catch any spelling errors that slip into your blog posts without you noticing them.
Spellr.us launched at the recent Techcrunch50 conference, and prior to that Kevin from Spellr.us had asked for ideas about how to draw attention to their demo stand. I made a suggestion which Kevin and the team developed into a t-shirt idea, and now they’ve been kind enough to send me one too!
So thanks to Kevin, Dain and the rest of the team there. Can’t wait to see what is coming up with the new version of Spellr.us!
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