Here it comes! WordPress 2.7 is live and available for download. WordPress 2.7 was about to release on one month before i.e. on 10th November 2008, but due to some beta testing and bug fixing. WordPress 2.7 is named as “Coltrane” for famed jazz Saxophonist, John Coltrane.
WordPress 2.7 has lots of awesome features and improvements. It is a different version than earlier versions of WordPress; it is simple, user-friendly and more importantly faster.
Important features of WordPress 2.7
- Comment Threading
- One-Click Plugin Installs
- Sticky Posts
- Theme Update API Notices
- Updating the Core WordPress
- Column Control
- QuickPress
- Plugin Browser
- Comment Paging
- Recent Drafts
- Ping & Trackback Moderation
Download WordPress 2.7
Don’t forget to backup your blog before upgrading it to WordPress 2.7.
WordPress team has already released two beta versions of WordPress 2.7 (here and here) and now they have released beta 3.Both the beta versions were as good as expected, but there were few bugs in it.
Let’s look at the changes that are made to improve beta 3.
- Numerous style improvements and refinements.
- All admin notices now go under the page title.
- PHP Notice fixes.
- Dashboard widget options now properly save.
- Menu fixes.
- New design for Quick Edit.
- Canonical feed URL fixes.
- Walker fixes.
- An update for Hello Dolly.
- Plugin installer updates.
- Numerous font updates.
- Updated login logo.
- Switch position of “Save Draft” and “Preview” buttons in publish module.
- File upload support for MS Office 2007+ file formats.
- Media upload buttons won’t show if the user doesn’t have the upload capability.
- Canonical redirects only do yes-www or no-www redirection for domains.
- Shift-click checkbox range selection improvement.
- Add New User page now separate.
- Tag suggest only suggests tags (not other taxonomy terms).
- QuickPress shows “Submit for Review” if user cannot publish.
- Private posts/pages, and password-protected posts/pages are rolled into new “Visibility” section of publish module.
If you have installed beta 1 or beta 2, you can use automatic upgrade feature to upgrade it to beta 3. Since it is a beta version feature you may find bugs in it, but you can always upgrade it manually. 
Download WordPress 2.7 Beta 3
WordPress 2.7 Beta 1 has lots of bugs in it and that’s why, today, WordPress team has released the second beta version of WordPress 2.7.
Here are list of changes in WordPress 2.7 Beta2.
- The Upload button didn’t always show. Fixed.
- JS on the Dashboard broke for blogs with no comments, causing several UI elements to “freeze”. Fixed.
- Recent Drafts Dashboard module didn’t show correct times. Fixed.
- Various Autosave fixes.
- Redirect after deleting a page from the editor went back to the deleted page. Fixed.
- Fixed loading of translations for default TinyMCE plugins.
- Added avatars to the edit users list.
- Added some missing translations.
- Fixed some validation errors.
- Fixed some PHP warnings and notices.
- Handle inconsistent file permissions during auto upgrade.
- Change Publish box layout to better accommodate internationalized text.
- Fix quick editing of the last page in the Edit Pages list.
- Fix Screen Options for IE.
- Fixes for choose tag from tag cloud.
- Rewrite rules fixes for certain hosts.
- Don’t check for updates on every page load.
- Easier post box dropping.
- Preview fixes.
- RTL fixes.
- Fixed broken wp-mail.
- Plugin update and install fixes.
- First draft of contextual help tab.
Since it is a beta version we won’t recommend you to try it on your main blog.
Download WordPress 2.7 Beta 2
WordPress is ready to launch its new version i.e. WordPress 2.7 on 10th November 2008. WordPress 2.5 and 2.6 versions were simply nice and WordPress 2.7 seems to rock the blogosphere again with some major and advanced features.
Let’s look at some features that are expected to be in WordPress 2.7.
- Keyboard shortcuts for comment moderation.
- Sticky Posts.
- Remove old/unused code.
- Theme updates api, like we do for plugins.
- One-click plugin installs.
- Automatic upgrade of WordPress .
- Embed support, tied in with shortcodes .
- Reply to comments from admin.
- Sitemaps by default.
- Separate Large and Full image sizes, related improvements.
These are few features that will make WordPress 2.7 different and advanced from its earlier versions. Check out some more features that are expected to be in the WordPress 2.7 here or here.
Note: This is just a list of features that maybe included in the WordPress 2.7 so there’s no surety of these features will be available in forthcoming version 2.7. Looking at the (expected) features of WordPress 2.7, it looks very promising and we hope that it will live-up to the expectations of WordPress users.