I’m truly amazed. I think the time has come, I mean not yet but hopefully until final release of WordPress 2.7 will be officially released. Since my last review things has speed up real fast, seem that I hurried a little though.
I’m a hasty type of person you know, should I have waited a little more I guess. But anyway, regardless of what have been said up until now, “the dirty dozen” behind WordPress has eventually come to the most smartest decision ever. The new features 2.7 will bring are magnificent. They decided to implement Automatic Upgrade into WordPress’ Core. I am stoned.

Maybe it’s not as big as I’m making it look, nevertheless it deserves raise of attention and wide-spread publication.

Weblog Tools Collection author Keith Dsouz earlier this summer has presented a list of upcoming features we all should be happy about. Among which is the so much discussed and criticized Automatic Upgrade option, which quietly has been hold behind the curtains. I am simply going to quote him for the list of each particular feature. But before I go into that, he stated that there’s a serious possibility that not all of this features will be coming with 2.7 as they have only been planned/proposed in discussions regarding 2.7. We all have the right to hope, so that is what I am going to do, I suggest you do the same. If by any chance in the end we experience disappointment, then I hope my keyboard breaks for nothing would stop me then from expressing my opinion in a vague manner.

However, yesterday Jeff Chandler (jeffro2pt0) has almost admitted that WordPress 2.7 will have all those. In his long article titled The Road to Automation he specifically discusses WordPress Automatic Upgrade feature, yet withholding from stating it surely. No need to put dust upon your clothes for someone other fails to accomplish his/their responsibility. I fully understand you Jeff.
Below is the list as published in WLTC.com:

  • Comments API – This according to me is the most exciting feature, it will allow developers to create offline integration of comments management, where users could use desktop clients to manage comments (moderate, edit, reply, delete, spam, unspam).
  • Keyboard shortcuts for comment moderation – This feature will help users to quickly moderate comments using keyboard shortucts, so you can expect key combinations like Ctrl + S to spam a comment, Ctrl + A to approve and so on.
  • Theme Update API – WordPress 2.5 and above have really made plugin management quite easy, you automatically receive notices when a new update to a plugin is available and can upgrade it without having to manually upload it to your FTP server. With this addition WordPress aims to bridge the gap between theme developers and the users for publishing updates to themes.
  • *One Click Plugin Installs – Installing a plugin will be much easier with One click plugin installs. A plugin with similar features called One Click Plugin was the winner of the Plugin Competition last year.
  • WordPress core updates – This is a feature many users have been waiting for, with core updates you can easily upgrade your WordPress versions. TheWordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin performs the same task.
  • Default Sitemaps – WordPress 2.7 will include a default sitemap creator, which will create Google XML sitemaps for your blog. Google Sitemaps Generator plugin is the best option available right now for creating XML sitemaps.
  • *Admin Panel Comment Replies - This plugin will help administrators to reply to comments using the admin panel. There are several plugins which allow you to do so right now, including WP AJax Edit Comments, Better Comments Manager and Absolute Comments.
  • Comment Threading – This feature will allow users to reply to other commentators in a threaded manner, where replied comments will display below the actual comment, WordPress already has the ability to scale to accomodate threaded comments, without requiring database changes. Brian’s Threaded Comments is a does the job of allowing users to reply to comments.
  • Subscribe to Comments – The WordPress team is also planning to include a option to allow commentators to subscribe to follow up comments, but this is marked as a question, so it may not actully make it into WordPress 2.7. TheSubscribe to Comments plugin does the job to notify commentators on follow up comments.
  • Widgets for Dashboard and *Write Box – This feature will allow users to re-arrange the widgets on the dashboard and write page to suit their preferences.
  • Batch Editing of Posts – This feature will allow users to batch edit their posts. Though there is not much information available about this right now, and I could not really find more from my research on the topic.

This far I can only prove the presence for the features above I put an asterisk before, as I have a bleeding-edge yet under development version of 2.7.

There’s more time left and lot more to do though, hence I’m going to keep my fingers crossed and hope for full commitment and engagement from Automattic into bringing to the end user this wonderful much expected features.

Finally, if your curiosity pushes you to go and try out some yourself, then go get the last developing version of upcoming WordPress 2.7 and enjoy its flavor.

P.S. Check the full list of proposed features at WordPress.org

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