WordPress 2.7 Beta 2 Released
Today, the WordPress community released the second beta version of its platform. While an unfinished product still in its testing stage and with reportedly several glitches when run on browsers such as Internet Explorer, WordPress 2.7 Beta 2 brings many innovations and layout changes to the table.
The announcement was made by Ryan Boren on the WordPress.org website and also explains that, while we are reaching the final stages of the development process, the team is about two weeks behind schedule, which means the 2.7 version will probably be released within the end of the month, but not before November 10 as originally planned.
Preview of the new post interface for WordPress 2.7
Aspects that still have to be fixed before the production version can be released are particularly with regard to the new design in the administrative interface, which will feature a left side panel and provide a much clearer navigational structure, along with a cleaner interface that should make the task of managing websites even easier to achieve.
As explained in the post, the current beta seems to be working best on browsers such as Firefox and Safari, while Internet Explorer users might still face some problems at the moment. Regardless of the browser adopted, users are recommended to test the beta version and provide feedback to developers, in order to find out as many bugs as possible and come up with a reasonably stable release, in the spirit of the open source community.
Boren also wrote that the current plan in the development team is to keep working as if the release date was Nov. 10, when, instead of version 2.7, the release candidate — an high quality, almost finished release that only needs polishing in a few corners that is already recommendable for broad use — will see the light. After that, a final release date will be set and the software will be rolled out within the end of the month.
Peter Hagopian from InformationWeek reports that his installation of 2.7 Beta 1 went without a hitch and that everything seems to be working fine in his own testing experience: those who don’t want to take any chances should however wait for 2.7 to be out. The latest official update to the production code of the WordPress platform, version 2.6.3, was released slightly over a week ago and is meant to correct a minor security vulnerability, while the first beta of 2.7 was released on November 1.
Preview of the new Dashboard featured in WordPress 2.7
A post by Jane Wells from the WordPress team details the innovations in the visual design that 2.7 will feature. As explained there, one of the main objectives was to reduce the need to load new pages just to access sub-navigation menus: a new, dynamic menu with voices that can be vertically expanded and contracted to reveal subcategories will therefore be a cornerstone new feature that should be appreciated by many regular users.
The new dashboard is the other notable innovation in the admin interface, and appears much more user friendly than before, allowing you to monitor your entire site with just a glimpse of an eye and with customizable modules that can show information such as site visits, post and comment statistics, and so on.
Further details on the new features WordPress 2.7 will bring to the market can be found on Ryan Boren’s website and will also be released during the next two weeks on the WordPress blog as the end of the month nears.
Tags: WordPress 2.7, WordPress community
Dario Borghino
Dario Borghino is a computer engineering student at Turin's
Polytechnic, Italy. He started writing science and technology related
articles in February 2008 and his articles have appeared on sites such
as ISEdb.COM, eHow and Suite101.com. You can visit his personal Web site here.
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