In what has been a long time coming it looks like WordPress 3.0 is now available for WordPress users to download.  Everyone should see a “WordPress 3.0 is available! Please update now” banner in their dashboard which you can click to quickly upgrade, or for those of us that didn’t get the dashboard banner announcing the update being available, you can go into Tools -> Upgrade to complete the update.

WordPress 3.0 is a pretty significant update which includes the WordPressMU integration, 1,217 bug fixes and several important feature enhancements.   Here is a video with additional information:

One of the lesser talked about features introduced in WordPress 2.7 is the new feature that breaks comments into multiple pages to create faster load times.   By default, this feature is activated and set to allow 50 comments before the break.    The problem is, with this new feature activated, your WordPress blog is creating duplicate content.

Here is what I found while checking my Google Webmaster Tools account for this website:

Duplicate Title Tags

Duplicate Descriptions

Is this a huge deal?  Probably not, but you may want to consider unchecking this box in your Dashboard > Settings > Discussion tab.   Hopefully in a future version of WordPress this will NOT be checked by default and instead be an option.

It was with great excitement that WordPress 2.7 was released late last week, but what does it mean for you? Well, the admin section has been given a makeover, and now looks a lot slicker. Alongside this, there has been an emphasis on doing everything with a single click. You can see the new interface for yourself:

So, how do you get 2.7? If you installed WordPress using Fantastico then you upgrade by logging into your Fantastico control panel and selecting “upgrade to 2.7″. Its advisable to backup your database first, but don’t let this put you off upgrading – I’ve just upgraded two sites from 2.5.2 and 2.6.2 to 2.7 via Fantastico with no problems at all. Otherwise, head over to WordPress and download the software.

But why should you upgrade in the first place? 2.7′s visual overhaul makes it so much easier to use; you can rearrange your dashboard and have literally everything at your fingertips. You can reply and moderate comments from the dash (even by keyboard shortcuts!), as well as write new posts directly from the dashboard.

Plugins can be installed by installed by searching the WordPress.org plugins database with a single click without leaving your site. How cool is that! You can upload plugins from your computer without unzipping them and WordPress will install them. You can also upgrade your plugins with a single click. Speaking of single click upgrading, your upgrade to 2.7 could well be your last manual upgrade as 2.7 includes a feature that lets you upgrade your WordPress install with a single click.

With WordPress increasingly being used for everything, a useful new feature, Sticky Posts, allows you to keep a post at the top of your blog, even if you have more recent posts. In practice, this means if you’re running a competition or something like that, then you can keep attention directed at your big post.

The shiny new interface extends beyond the dashboad, and the focus is very much on moving everything around to suit you. The screen below shows how you can rearrange your post-writing page.

And for those wondering why 2.7 isn’t 3.0 with all of these great additions, according to Weblog Tools Collection, Matt doesn’t want to skip version numbers anymore.

For the complete lowdown, visit the codex.

Finally, this video from the WordPress team briefly looks through some of the new features

This was a guest post by Alex Denning, who is a WordPress power user, web design freelancer and currently maintains two sites – Nometet.com and GreenGrassGames.com. You can follow him on Twitter here. If you have WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a post for WordPress Hacks, please contact us.

Disclaimer: This post was written to generate some discussion about this topic.  If you have an idea for something you’d like to see added or integrated into WordPress, you can always contribute ideas and vote on other ideas over at WordPress Ideas.    If you look through the most popular ideas (historically), you’ll see that many are eventually integrated into the core WordPress software.  Some past examples are the current tagging system, automatic plugin updates, etc.    In other words, WordPress users often dictate which features are integrated into WordPress!

Over the next couple weeks, I plan on writing a few posts and get a couple discussions going about potential features I’d like to see built into the core WordPress installation.   We’ve talked about this in general a little bit before and many of these features are already available as WordPress plugins, but I feel they are important enough to bloggers that they should be built directly into WordPress.    Doing this also helps minimize the number of plugins used by WordPress.org bloggers, which can in turn minimize security risks or huge drains on system resources which can come from plugins.

This week I’ve decided to talk about the current WordPress search feature.  In its current state, the WordPress search feature is very basic.   You type in your keyword(s) and it will display all posts which contain that keyword in the reverse order of how they were posted (newest posts first).   This obviously does not make it easy for a reader of your blog to find the more relevant posts without a little luck.  The post they are looking for might be 3 pages deep!

As a result, many WordPress users have turned to building a Google Custom Search Engine (GCSE) into their WordPress blog.   This allows Google AdSense ads (it is optional), but much more importantly, it uses Google’s algorithm to display the most relevant posts first, allowing readers to find what they are looking for!

In a future version of WordPress, I’d like to see some attention put into building an improved search feature within WordPress.   Having an improved search algorithm would also be beneficial when searching within the WordPress dashboard as that search works the same way.  When trying to find a post to edit, I sometimes have to flip through several pages looking for it (if it is an older post).

What do you think?  Would you like to see improved search within WordPress?   How high of a priority is it to you?

Are you someone who enjoys using keyboard shortcuts?   If so, you are going to love WordPress 2.7.

Beginning with WordPress 2.7, one change is the addition of keyboard shortcuts for moderating comments.  According to the WordPress Codex:

Using Keyboard Shortcuts to Navigate

Navigating comments is accomplished with the j and k keys. When you first visit the Comments page, no comments are selected, so, first press the letter j, or the letter k, to select the first comment. After that, just press the letter j to move the select to the next comment.

• Pressing j moves the current selection (light-blue background) down.
• Pressing k moves the current selection (light-blue background) up.

Note that if you come to the bottom of a page of comments and press j again, you will be taken to the next page and the first comment of that next page will be selected. Likewise, pressing k at the top of a comment page will zoom you to the previous page, selecting the comment at the bottom of that previous page.

Using Keyboard Shortcuts to Perform Actions

For one of these actions to affect a comment, make sure the comment is first selected.

• Pressing a approves the currently selected comment.
• Pressing s marks the current comment as spam.
• Pressing d deletes the current comment.

Note that those first three actions (and most common actions) use the three left-most keys of the home row of a QWERTY keyboard. It is recommended that you shift your hand to the left so that your index finger is on d instead of on f, as is normal.

• Pressing u unapproves the currently selected comment, placing it back into moderation.
• Pressing r initiates an inline reply to the current comment (you can press Esc to cancel the reply).
• Pressing q activates “Quick Edit” which allows for rapid inline editing of the current comment.

Read the official Codex article here.