WordPress Releases Version 2.8
After a few weeks of feeling like the folks at Automattic were just about to release the stable version of WordPress 2.8, they’ve finally done it, and the release doesn’t disappoint. Nicknamed “Baker” (for trumpeter/vocalist Chet Baker — and since 2.7 was nicknamed “Coltrane”, I’m guessing somebody over there is a big jazz fan) it isn’t the visual makeover that 2.7 was, but it does tweak the design in ways that will make a lot of people happy.
It also has faster load times, a much better code editor, a revamped theme interface and more. The high-profile improvements:
Even More Admin Customizations
In 2.7, WordPress introduced a drag-and-drop interface that allowed you to place Dashboard boxes wherever you wanted and even get rid of the ones you didn’t care about. Now, in 2.8, you can also decide how many columns you want on each page, from one to four.
And it goes further. You now have complete customization of all your “list” pages — the pages that list your posts, categories, etc. Under the Screen Options tab, you can specify how many entries you want to appear per page, and what information you want to see. Don’t need to see the author? Get rid of that column.
Revamped Widget Section
The widget section has been the bane of WordPress users for a while. The previous interface just wasn’t very intuitive. You had to select a widget-ready area from the drop-down menu, then drag over a widget you wanted, then open the options for it, input your specifications, save the options, then save again so the changes would keep.
Here, the widget-ready areas are automatically detected and automatically saved. In other words, they’re fixed completely. There’s also a brand-new “Inactive Widgets” section you can drag widgets to if you want to deactivate them but save their settings.
Oh, and every widget you could previously only have one instance of is now available for as many concurrent uses as you want.
CodePress Editor
For anybody who ends up editing their site a lot through the “Appearance Editor” section of the dashboard like I do, this feature is a godsend. Instead of displaying your template files as wrapped blocks of basic text, the template files now feature the “CodePress” editor — an advanced text editor that looks a bit like Notepad++ and features syntax highlighting, line numbering, color-coding and no wrapping. Hooray!
Tag Manager
WordPress now features a tag manager in the same style as the previous release’s Categories manager.
Theme Installer
Taking a cue from the Plugin manager, WordPress now lets you search for new themes from the WordPress theme directory right inside your dashboard. You can filter searches by color scheme, columns, and features, and now you can even install themes automatically, too. As far as I could tell, the integration is seamless.
Automatic Daylight Savings Time
They’ve been promising this minor feature for years and have finally delivered: Daylight Savings Time is now updated automatically. I don’t really care, but I know a lot of people do, so: nice, right?
The Downsides
There are two ways to go here: either look at all the changes and decide most of them are unnecessary surface improvements, or look at all the changes and decide you want even more.
To speak for the former camp: do we really need this level of dashboard customization? Who really cares how many posts are listed in the “Edit Posts” section? Who really cares if you can hide certain columns? Why not concentrate on, say, security improvements?
Meanwhile, the latter camp has already noticed that while they like making their dashboard four columns, they wish they could create their own boxes for it, like customized Google homepages. And when using the CodePress editor, it takes a few seconds to kick in. And if you check your user account, there are still only two color schemes you can choose for the dashboard — gray or blue. For a release focused this much on dashboard customization, it seems like an oversight not to add a few more.
The Bottom Line
Impossible-to-please theoretical nitpickers aside, WordPress 2.8 does a great job of giving us a lot to play around with while strengthening the overall product. (At least, in theory: it’ll take a while of day-to-day use before I figure out whether their claim that page loads are faster isn’t just smoke-blowing.) I particularly like CodePress, the Tag manager, and the automatic Theme downloads.
If you’re still not feeling the “Wow” factor, I’m sure WordPress would love it if you watched their 2.8 introduction video at the development blog.