WordPress 2.8 – Widgets, Themes and Tags (oh my!)

No software version is ever released on time with every requested feature in place – but WordPress 2.8 is looking to have a ton of new features.  None of these changes have a dramatic impact on the interface, so the transition should be very easy for most administrators.

WordPress Widgets

One of the best features of WordPress 2.8 is the update to the widgets section.  The current widget management often involves these steps:  Your theme has two sidebars/widget areas and you want to move your text widget from first to the second sidebar.  First, you remove it from the first sidebar and save changes. Then you select the second sidebar from the drop down menu, click “show” and add the widget to the second sidebar.

In version 2.8 all your sidebars are now visible at once and you can drag and drop the required widgets into them.  It’s a little bit of time traveling here, as an earlier version of WordPress had the widgets like this and it’s a welcome return!  Plus, as soon as you place the widget into a sidebar, it will automatically show the widget’s properties which can then be modified as needed.

Another new widget feature is that you can have multiple instances of the same plugin.  This long requested feature will allow you to use the widget, most likely with different settings, in different sections of your site.

WordPress Themes

The new features in theme management will make theme hunting as easy as plugin hunting.  Essentially everything you can do with plugins you will be able to do with themes.  For example, if you go to Appearance > Add New Themes and you will be able to search for a theme by any keyword you want.  The search will allow you to apply different filters based on colors, columns, width and subject.  Once you find a theme it will also be easier to try out a new theme – no more FTPing!  This will be a huge boon to theme makers as many more users will be willing to try out new themes.

In WordPress 2.7x when managing themes, you would have to click on a particular theme’s image and then activate or discard them from the preview screen.  In version 2.8 all you have to do is click on the activate link and the desired theme gets applied directly without showing you a preview.  Additionally, you can also delete any unwanted themes from the same screen by clicking on the delete link.  Old themes and plugins and like day old fish – best get rid of them before they smell too much!

WordPress Tags

In this version of WordPress, Tags finally get equal treatment with categories.  Considering the role that tags play in search this is a valuable addition.  A new sub-section has been added to the Posts section called Post Tags that contains all the tags that you have created for this blog. Similar to categories, you can now change the Tag name, Tag slug and even add a description for your tags (something that Drupal users have been accustomed to).  This feature will be most useful for blogs which have multiple authors where the use of tags can quickly gets out of control with “tag, tagging, taggs, tags, WordPress tags” instead of just “WordPress tags.”

Many More New Features

This is just a summary of three areas where there are new features in WordPress 2.8.  There are of course many behind-the-scenes updates for WordPress developers – particularly for widget developers.  If you want to see ALL the new features, check out the official list of new WordPress 2.8 features.  As always, it’s worth updating only after checking to make sure all your plugins have been verified to work in the new version.

Written by David Silversmith from Info Musing
Posted on May 26th, 2009 and filed under WordPress
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