If you’re a WordPress blogger like me, you may be wondering if you should upgrade to the new WordPress 2.7. Didn’t they just update the admin interface? Why should we have to re-learn it all over again so soon?

If you have that concern, you’re not alone. WP has certainly been making one big change after another lately. Honestly, I wish they would have fixed some smaller issues first (like the image tool / media gallery that’s disgustingly slow and obnoxious if you have to add multiple images to a post), but it’s not all bad. Actually, I’m quite liking the changes to 2.7.

Here’s a screenshot of All Freelance Writing’s new admin area under 2.7:

As you can see, one of the biggest changes is the navigation (which is now along the left-hand side of your admin area as opposed to a horizonal nav bar on the top).  I was originally concerned about having to now scroll to reach anything near the bottom. It’s certainly not ideal if you’re in your settings and such often, but fortunately most still comes up above the fold, so it’s not that bad (that’ll depend on your screen size / resolution though). I actually kind of like it.

One thing I’m not loving is the fact that it feels like lately everyone’s releasing updates where everything is gray. Totally drab and dreary if you ask me, especially if you spend a lot of time on the backend of WordPress. I’m sure you can find admin themes to change it though.

I do really like the dashboard on this one – especially the QuickPress option (you can write a post from there instead of having to visit the write post page). The prominant at-a-glance stats are nice too, and you can still find your latest comments and links. The best part is that you can drag the dashboard elements around to arrange them how you like – personally I like the links in a more prominant position, so I was able to move them up.

You also have the option to decide what you do and don’t want to see on various admin pages. For example, on the dashboard if you click “screen options in the upper right of the page, you’ll get these options:

So if you don’t want to see the WP development blog, news, comments, the QuickPress option, etc., you simply uncheck them and they’ll be removed.

You can do the same thing with the write post page, which now looks like this:

As you can see, the default is to move tags and categories to the right column (categories were there in older versions of WordPress). Well, what if you’re like me, and you liked having the tags directly below the post, but you hated having to scroll further down to choose categories for every post. No problem. You can click and drag each element, to have them where you want. So for me, it would now look more like this:

Cool, huh?

You’ll also notice there’s a screen options link on this page too. Just like on the dashboard, you can choose to hide things you don’t use from view completely (so if you never use excerpts or custom fields, you don’t have to see those options).

Overall, so far I’m liking 2.7. At the same time, I’m really looking forward to seeing if they fix the image tool issues in 2.8 (I did see comments somewhere to that effect, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed – I’d really love the media tool below the write post area again, or at least for it to be an option).

If you want to learn more about version 2.7, check out the full feature list here.  Here are a few of the highlights:

• You can respond to comments from your admin area now, instead of having to visit each post page.
• You can now make a post a “sticky” post from the write post page (under visibility) – this means it will stay at the top of your page even if you post something else that’s newer.
• Automatic upgrades have been added to the core, so you won’t have to manually upgrade WP anymore (if your host supports the automatic option), and you won’t need to use the automatic upgrade plugin (I love that plugin, and actually used it here to upgrade AFW to 2.7).