Triune Designs Blog: Web Design, Development, & Marketing

Oh yes, oh yes. The day has finally arrived when WordPress releases its most current, and probably best, upgrade: WP version 2.7. First let me say that WordPress before v2.7 was just an awesome blogging platform. However, with this most current improvement, WordPress really sets itself apart as the premiere self-hosted blogging platform.

Why is WordPress so powerful? Here are a couple of reasons

• The large WordPress community (conservative estimates show 7.4 million blogs using WordPress self-install/self-hosted and another 4.7 million blogs hosted on WordPress’ own website. That means a total of 12 million WordPress-based bloggers.)
• WordPress’ flexibility
• WordPress is extremely easy to use and learn
• WordPress is free and open source

WordPress works so well because the application is in tune with the company’s philosophy for its product. Their philosophy is as follows:

• Have a small and capable core for its basic programming structure
• Allow for a vibrant plugin market (there are thousands of plugins available for you to use)
• Allow for thousands of themes for users to choose
• Options in the core programming are bad

I believe the programmers have stayed very much in line with this philosophy. WordPress’ basic structure is very lightweight and easy to use right out of the box. Then as the user feels comfortable they can begin to add extra features through the use of plugins, which serve to enhance the blog’s basic capabilities. Fore example a few plugins I use are Intense Debate, Meet Your Commenters, Akismet (spam is bad), and Feedburner. This combination of lightweight core and plugins really allows for a great user experience from both the reader’s and writer’s perspectives.

So, what is new in WordPress 2.7? I am glad you asked.

• Automatic core upgrade!! (Author’s opinion: this is by far the best aspect of the upgrade)
• Plugin installation from within the admin
• Redesigned admin interface
• Threaded comments
• Paged comments
• Reply to comments from the admin pages
• Direct access to submenus
• Great keyboard shortcuts for comment moderation
• Customizable admin screens
• QuickPress (quick posting/writing quick drafts from the dashboard)
• Sticky posts (a post can be “stuck” on the home page, which is good for popular posts that you want to keep on the home page and towards the top)

(Author’s works cited blurb: I got most of the information about WP 2.7 and the WordPress philosophy from Mark Jaquith (@markjaquith) during his Charlotte WordCamp keynote address. Thanks Mark!)

Okay, so there you are. Now you know why WordPress is so great and some of the incredible features coming up in the latest upgrade. If you are not using WordPress then I highly suggest you give it a try and kick the tires a little bit. I believe you will really like what you see. If you are one of the fortunate ones who already use WordPress then make sure you upgrade and just stand back in awe.

Until next time, happy blogging!

Tags: blogging, cltwordcamp, wordpress