A Peek at Some WordPress Beta 2.8 Features

WordPress Beta 2.8 has been out for a bit and I have finally taken some time to look at the new features. There’s some good stuff there! I won’t take the time to go through them all, but here are some that are worth highlighting.

THEMES

Now you can upload themes through the admin panel. In 2.7 and older, you needed to use FTP clients. And since there are a lot of WordPress users out there that don’t get “ftp” they limited themselves to the preinstalled themes. And an added benefit: now you can browse themes and search via keywords, and also apply filters too based on width, colours and columns. In addition the management of themes has improved. Before, you had to select the theme you wanted, and then either press activate or close after viewing a preview of the theme. Now you get options to activate immediately if you want, and also to delete the theme if you want as well.

WIDGETS AND PLUGINS

Although there isn’t any major change to the widget view, it it a lot cleaner and easier to use. As far as plugins, you can now edit them from within your editor. If a plugin is not working well, and you have the know how in coding, you can tweak it in order to get it working correctly.

COMMENTS

The new option to edit individual comments from the edit post selection saves a bit of time to do the standard delete, spam and reply to comments.

DASHBOARD

Again, just a bit making things a bit easier, you can now change the look of your dashboard and can set the number of columns that you want to be shown. Anything from one to four columns is allowed.

NOTE: If you are on the free WordPress.com, some of the features are not available.

So that’s just a quick preview. There is a whole bunch of other changes and improvements, but for most WordPress users, these are the one’s that will be more obvious. Not sure when we are looking at for the full release, but the Beta version does seem pretty stable. In any case, it’s just around the corner.

Our Typepad, Wanna Be WordPress Blog

When we set up our first blog, we were inspired by the book Blog Wild by Andy Wibbels. It was short, sweet and to the point. And he really liked and recommended the platform Typepad. So as a result, that is what we used and what our marketing blog is still run on. Although it has its limitations, setup and posting are pretty damn intuitive. It’s done us well!

Now I have become a WordPress Nazi, similar to the Soup Nazi in Seinfield.

You should use WordPress! It’s a fantastic platform! No Typepad for you!

In fact, we are now doing all of our website development in the WordPress platform, which is working out great. It’s good to specialize. But sometimes I look over at our other blog and let out a sigh. I so much want to move it to WordPress, but heck, I know the work it will take. And the fact that we use images in all of our posts, well, that just seems overwhelming. Yes, I long to add widgets and plugins to the Typepad blog. Yes, I grunt heavily when I see another great widget and find it is “created for WordPress”.

As I write this post, I’m still considering making the switch. When I wake up at 3 am I mull over this idea. When I’m taking a shower, and my best ideas pop into my head, the “move our Typepad blog to WordPress” crops up now and then. So who knows? Maybe I’ll muster up the courage and go for it. If I do, I will share my trials and tribulations with you.