New Features in WordPress 2.3

WordPress 2.3 was released Monday 24th September, bringing major advances to the engine that powers many millions of blogs. Slated as a release candidate, this version has been thoroughly tested and is already featured as the latest stable download.

This release isn't just an incremental update with security patches, it includes a host of new features such as native tags, core and plugin update notifications, enhanced entry management and improved handling of draft entries, native support for canonical redirection, atom feeds, and a bunch of other updates too numerous to mention here.

Tagging Your Posts
With the explosion of sites using tags to search for content, Technorati and Flickr being two obvious examples, it was only ever a matter of time until WordPress joined the club. Version 2.3 sees the first implementation of tags by the development team, although in true WP style, they tell us they haven't implemented tag management yet, so no editing or deleting, they want to assess the need for this before committing extra code to the base.

Inexperienced users might grumble about this, but one of the strengths of WordPress is the range of plugins available, and several tag plugins already exist, it won't be long until v2.3 management of tags is accomplished. The plugin route may be preferred by many users anyway given the range of customization options that are a typical feature of third party plugins. The tag functionality built into 2.3 works well, tags are displayed along with the entry and clicking the tag link displays all entries with the same tag.

Webmasters with existing tags using 'Simple Tagging', 'Jerome's Keywords', 'Bunny's Technorati Tags', or 'Ultimate Tag Warrior' are able to convert their tags to v2.3 using the Import function found under the Manage tab in Dashboard. Converting your existing WordPress categories to tags is also possible for user's who want to remove categories altogether.

Update Notification in Dashboard
A significant addition to v2.3 is the core and plugin update notifications that have been added to the Dashboard. Long overdue, this feature, not without controversy over privacy issues, is likely to become the main selling feature of WordPress 2.3 as users realize they no longer have to search for plugin homepages or latest versions to ensure their installation is uptodate.

Here's how it works. WordPress is configured to automatically contact the WordPress servers, api.wordpress.org and query for updates to core files or plugins registered in the WP plugins repository hosted on wordpress.org. When new updates are available, these will be displayed in Dashboard with a direct link to the files or download page. A notable absence is the ability to automatically install the update, although rumors abound this may be included in future versions.

A criticism of the update notification service has been leveled at the 'always on' nature of the feature. Privacy and potential hacking scenarios have been raised, along with request that the service be patched to allow an opt in/opt out mode. It will be interesting to see how the developers deal with this issue in future releases given their rationale that it is better to reduce the volume of support queries and insecure installations by providing the notification service.

Enhanced Post Filtering and Improved Draft Entry Management
This is a welcome addition for any blogger with more than a handful of posts. WordPress aficionados should immediately notice the enhanced filters in the manage posts page. Posts are now filterable by status, month and category making it much easier to find specific posts to edit.

The status dropdown is particularly welcome with options for selecting published, draft, scheduled, or pending review. Managing unpublished entries has never been easier in WordPress.

Native Canonical Redirection
Any WordPress webmaster familiar with the duplicate content penalty arising from www or no www, will be delighted with v2.3's native support for canonical redirection. Simply enable this from within wp-admin, under Options to experience seemless redirection, most users will never even know that they've been redirected unless they look at the address bar. This should make it easier to track SERPs on WordPress powered sites.




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