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.

Tagged as: Dashboard, Releases, WordPress