Today, while browsing the WordPress website, I noticed that WordPress 2.8 Beta was available for testing. So, I decided to download it and give it a test run. Here is a list of major changes that make this release a bit different from the earlier versions.

Manage your Tags

A new sub-section has been added to the Posts section called “Post Tags” that contains all the tags that have been used so far in your blog. Just like categories, you can change the Tag name, Tag slug and also add description for your tags.

Manage Themes Better

When managing your themes earlier, you had to click on a particular theme’s screenshot and then activate or discard it from the enlarged theme preview screen. This has been changed to something efficient now. You just have to click on the “activate” link and the desired theme gets applied directly without showing you a preview (the preview sometimes used to get stuck in case a theme was broken or if a required plugin wasn’t installed). This feature can indeed save a lot of precious time. Additionally, you can also delete any unwanted themes from the same screen by clicking on the “delete” link.

Browse New Themes

This cool addition in WordPress 2.8 will let you add new themes for your blog right from your admin section. All you need to do is go under Appearance -> “Add New Themes”, and from here, you can search for a theme by any keyword you want. It also lets you apply different filters based on colors, columns, width and subject. So, now you can go theme hunting at full steam

Improved Widgets Section

The best and most wanted change that’s been done in WordPress 2.8 is the revamp of the widgets section. Refreshingly, all your sidebars are visible at once (just like old times) and you can drag and drop the required widgets into them. So unlike WordPress 2.7.1, you don’t have to press the silly “show” button anymore to bring up your individual sidebars. As soon as you drop a widget into a sidebar, it will pop down the widget’s properties automatically which can be modified and saved.

Edit Individual Post Comments

While editing a post, you can now see the existing comments that have been made till now in a separate box section at the bottom. You can unapprove, spam, delete, edit, quick edit and reply to the comments right from the post edit screen.

And, here are some other minor changes that might appeal to many WordPress users :-

• WordPress doesn’t ask for confirmation when marking a comment as spam
• You don’t get notified of your own comments
• You can autosave posts/pages when pressing Control/Command+S
• Support for more than one gallery on the same page
• You can now edit all the files of a particular plugin
• WordPress now allows case-insensitive logins (username)
• You can have multiple instances of a widget now

Read further on the changes…