So WordPress 2.7 has been out and about for a week or so now, and I’m quite frankly literally mildly slightly marginally surprised it hasn’t been called WordPress 3 for all the things it’s changed – a lot of things! OK, so said things are confined to the back end, I don’t think there’s any major changes to the underlying structure, but given that the back end is where everyone spends all their time, it’s still a big deal.

First major change worth mentioning is the new navigation system. Everything’s been jumbled around a bit and categorised more sensibly and what results is a rather smart expandy-collapsy navigation bar down the left hand side for everything. No more splitting of core navigation items across the top left and top right of the screen, hoorah.

The navigation bar can even be reduced to a thin icon form, for if you’re still living in 2001 with a 15″ monitor, to get you back a hundred or so pixels of horizontal real estate. Very thoughtful!

The next major revision is the main Dashboard page. This has now been totally 2.0-ed up so you can drag and drop the various elements to organise the screen how you like it, which is a pretty major bonus. You can even turn off page elements that you don’t want to see! I’ve settled on having the Recent Drafts and Quick Press elements on the right hand column, with the Right Now and Stats taking priority on the left. With Quick Press you can very quickly save new ideas in a draft post right from the dashboard, and Recent Drafts element then keeping your in-progress things right where you can see them as soon as you login, two features I’m a real big fan of, as I’m forever forgetting stuff, and with this setup you’re reminded of things you’re working on all the time. Bonus!

It’s changed WordPress from a fine-but-a-little-awkward-sometimes tool into something that really is very fluid and much quicker to use… not that it was that slow to begin with, but these revisions just make so much sense I can’t help but sing their praises.