WordPress 2.7 Release Candidate 1 has been out for about a week now, and “Mister Impatient” here has actually gone ahead and upgraded this blog to the new version. Having poked around a little, here are seven features I really, really love:
Sticky Posts
Ever had times when you needed to ensure that an announcement or post was read by all your readers? In the past, you could either use a plug-in to make a post “sticky” or do what I did — put the announcement up as a page then made sure that I directed readers there as often as possible in every post.
Well, now there’s no need to go to such great lengths to make a post “sticky”. The feature is included in the core program! To make a post sticky, simply check the box “Stick this post to the front page” under the “Publish” menu.
Comment Threading
This is probably the most anticipated feature in WordPress 2.7. As with sticky posts, the feature was also previously available through the use of a plug-in, but is now built into the core program. I didn’t really like the plug-in, so I resorted to other methods to help myself and readers realize who is responding to which comment. Not a big deal, perhaps, but I’m not too fond of utilizing that many plug-ins.
Comment threading wasn’t turned on by default in my installation of WordPress 2.7 RC1 so if you are wondering where the feature is, you’ll need to go to Settings > Discussion > Other comment settings to enable it.
Automatically Close Comments on Old Posts
Spammers love to target old posts on blogs, and it’s been a chore to always have to monitor your posts and close the comments when they are of a certain age. WordPress 2.7 offers you an effective way to automatically disable comments on old posts of a specified age.
To enable this feature and set the “expiry” date, go to Settings > Discussion > Other comment settings (the option is just above the one to enable comment threading).
One-Click Plug-in Management
The Plug-in Browser/Installer is a very welcome addition to the core program in WordPress 2.7 — you can now easily browse for and install plug-ins from within the Dashboard, instead of having to first browse for one at WordPress.org, then download, unpack, upload and activate it!
Yes, I know there was a good plug-in for doing the same previously, but (again) I’m not a big fan of using too many plug-ins.
Batch Edit Posts/Pages
What happens when you decide that you need to add a new tag to a number of posts, or assign a new category to them? In the past, you would have to manually edit each affected post or page — time-consuming when you run a blog that has a good many years of archives!
With WordPress 2.7, you can now perform a batch update/edit:
- Click Posts › Edit, or Pages › Edit.
- Check the boxes of the posts/pages you want to edit.
- Select “Edit” from Actions, then click “Apply”.
- Add/edit/remove a tag, category or perform whatever edits you need to.
- Click “Save”, and you’re done!
Quick Edit from the Posts Dashboard
I simply love the convenience and ease that comes with this enhancement. This is so much easier than having to navigate to each individual post in order to edit it!
Quick Reply to Comments
Again, another welcome added convenience! In fact, you can even do the same from the Dashboard, but that display gives you a truncated view of the comment — still alright for short comments, actually.
There are quite a number of enhancements that are also worth mentioning, like paginated comments, the ability to rearrange elements on the Dashboard, etc., but if I had to choose just seven, the above-mentioned will be my list.
What are yours?
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