How WordPress 2.8 upgrade will improve your blogging experience

Don’t you love when you get the following message on your WordPress dashboard:

WordPress 2.8 is available! Please update now.

You click on update and off it goes. One click automatic upgrade from 2.7 to 2.8 without having to do anything else.

My WordPress 2.8 video review

I just upgraded my blog to WordPress 2.8 today. Not as major upgrade as WordPress 2.7 but WordPress 2.8 has couple of huge changes in Appereance menu. These changes will make it much easier for bloggers to find, install and change themes on their blogs without having to use FTP and without uploading files onto the server.

Thesis theme also released an upgrade immediately so it now supports WordPress 2.8 as well. For Thesis users, please upgrade Thesis to the new version Thesis 1.5.1 before you upgrade WordPress.

This is a video review of me playing around with WordPress 2.8.

Huge changes in the Appearance menu

• Appearance – Add New Themes

You can now search for different WordPress themes directly via the interface. Not only that, you can preview how the themes would look on your blog and you can install and activate the theme via the interface as well.

In WordPress 2.7 this happened to plugins, now the themes as well. You no longer need to use FTP to upload your theme files, you can download the theme, install it, and activate it directly from the WordPress interface. Amazing!

• Appearance – Widgets

New Widgets interface. Very Apple like in terms of the usability. Just drag and drop widgets into your sidebar. Very quick, very simple… you do not even have to save the Sidebars anymore. As soon as you drag a Widget to the sidebar it shows on your blog. Amazing!

Change columns in your screen layout

When choosing the screen option of your WordPress interface you can now choose the number of columns (between 1-4). A little improvement that can make your interface much smaller, easier to use and can improve your productivity.

One-click WordPress upgrade

See a video of me demonstrating how easy it is to upgrade a WordPress blog:

Install WordPress 2.8 now

I hope this quick review helps you decide to upgrade to WordPress 2.8 immediately. If you are on a different platform, this upgrade makes WordPress stand out even more. It is by far the most professional and the most customizable blogging platform and it will definitely help your blog reach a higher level. Here is a guide on how to install WordPress 2.8 on your own server.