WordPress 2.7 “Coltrane” Now Available!

December 11, 2008 by Emily

Around the Web, Downloads

After a bunch of betas and two release candidates the WordPress team has finally released WordPress 2.7 “Coltrane” for download. 2.7 is a HUGE leap forward as far as the interface as well as new features it offers. The team has really been listening to it’s users and quietly going down the list adding the most requested features starting back in 2.5 earlier this year, but 2.7 is definitely the culmination of this.

Over 150 people contributed code directly to the release, our highest ever, with many tens of thousands more participating in the polls, surveys, tests, mailing lists, and other feedback mechanisms the WordPress dev team used in putting this release together.

The biggest difference in 2.7 is the new admin interface. Yes, another new admin interface. But this one seems to be here to stay (Matt says we should expect it to still basically be the same a year from now). It was developed with the user in mind to make the area simple to navigate and with as few clicks as possible. The dashboard and the Post pages are also almost completely customizable giving you the ability to drag and drop boxes wherever you want or removing them altogether. Also, don’t forget to check “Your Profile” under Users as the 2.5 color scheme feature is still there and personally, I think the blue color scheme is much nicer than the default gray one.

Perhaps the best new feature in 2.7 is finally the ability to perform one-click upgrades directly from the admin area. No more manual upgrades! No more having to pay your designer to do your upgrades (believe me we don’t mind!). Related to this is the new plugin interface which lets you search for and install new plugins from the plugins database directly inside your admin area. With the plugins database integrated the themes database can’t be that far behind!

Also new is the Comments and Post/Page management interfaces. You can reply to comments directly for the admin now. If you need to edit a category or a tag on a post, you no longer need to open the whole post up, just use the quick edit link to change those things directly from the post management page.

For comments, they have also added new features like threaded comments and paged comments. However, these features will need to be added to your current template, they won’t work unless you have a 2.7 compatible theme. If you need help making your theme 2.7 compatible (or even 2.5 compatible since many themes still don’t support gravatars) feel free to contact us and we can get you set up with all these snazzy new features.

So what are you waiting for? Upgrade your blog today! We can help if you need it, and just think, next time you’ll be able to upgrade with a the click of a button! This is not one of those releases where you need to wait around and see if anything goes wrong. As I mentioned above, there have been several betas and release candidates, plus it already went live on WordPress.com, so millions of people are already using it. This is a very strong release with features that you don’t want to miss out on.

Here’s a nice visual introduction video:

Here are some resources to check out plugin/theme compatibility as well as upgrading your theme to use new 2.7 features:

Download it now!