The video below provides a quick intro to the new dashboard coming in WordPress 2.7.  The changes to the dashboard are dramatic and will require adjustments from even the most experienced WordPress users.  I will say that the automatic upgrade feature in the beta works smoothly.  Keeping WordPress sites up to date should be easier than ever. 

There’s a number of other items coming with version 2.7 as well, including:

Upgrades and installs over secure FTP
Add media without creating post
Quick Edit inline editing
Shortcuts menu
Comment reply from admin
XMLRPC Comments API
Revised Dashboard
Comment threading and paging
API additions
Navigation expand/collapse in two directions
Bulk editing of posts
HTTPOnly Cookies
Automatic upgrade
Screen Options to hide/show modules/columns on screens
Plugin browser/installer
Inline PHPdoc documentation
QuickPress
New design/layout
Drag and drop on dashboard and post screen
Sticky posts

Contributing to the WordPress Community

When Holly and I formed Shiny New Toy earlier this year, we talked a lot about all the people we have learned from over the years.  Included in that discussion was the community of people involved with WordPress.  Holly and easily agree that our favorite online community are the developers, designers, hackers, and evangelists involved with the WordPress software.  That community has shared so much knowledge and has never hesitated to share their knowledge with anyone interested.  It’s a big factor (in fact it’s probably the biggest factor) in making WordPress one of the best solutions for publishing content onto the web.  Holly and I felt a desire to do more to participate in this community and so, we came up with the idea of WP Screencasts. It’s another effort in our continuing meme of  ”giving back.”

Another reason we love WordPress so much is how much thought has been put into the user interface of the WordPress dashboard.  We’ve encountered many web-based content management systems over the years and the usability of the WordPress admin screens outshines that of competing CMS packages.  However, we continue to run into challenges with teaching content managers how to use WordPress to add, edit, and manage online content.  It’s not that training users on WordPress is impossible, we’ve just found that different people learn in different ways.  Some folks require a significant amount of hands-on training and we’re happy to provide that.  Other folks do well with reading the information found in resources such as the WordPress Codex and books like WordPress for Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson.

What we found missing for WordPress users was a comprehensive set of video based training content for learning how to use administer content in a self-hosted WordPress based websites.  WP Screencasts aims to fill that gap and complement WordPress learning resources already available on the web and in print.

A Living Resource

Our initial set of videos that we are launching with is just the beginning.  We’ll continue to expand by adding additional screencasts over time.  If there is a task that isn’t covered in a video here, let us know and we’ll do our best to include it in the future.

WP Screencasts can be found by visiting http://wpscreencasts.com