10 Plugins to Test Drive WordPress 2.7 Right Now

Guest article by Arun
WordPress 2.7 is round the corner and if you want to test drive it you can grab a copy of beta versions (please dont use them for productive sites-use only for testing purpose) OR you can even get all the WordPress 2.7 features through plugins. Following are the list of WordPress Plugins you need in order to get the full functionality of WP 2.7.

1. Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu
If you are using the WordPress version greater than 2.5, then the first plugin you have to install is this one. The lazy and the productive people will love this plugin. All admin links are available in a neat CSS driven drop down menu. No need to click on “Manage” then “Pages” to edit pages, go to any admin page from any admin page. Download.

2. OneClick Plugin Updater
OneClick is a WordPress Plugin+Firefox Extension combo which will change the way you look at WordPress forever. It reduces the effort needed to install a plugin or a theme for wordpress to just one simple click. It is excellent for admins, non-techies, people with restrictive firewalls, and just about anyone who uses wordpress and installs plugins and themes. It Installs any plugin/theme from the zip file on your hard drive.� Install any plugin/theme from any URL of the zip file and perform easy maintenance and upgrades. Download.

3. Manageable
This plugin will do inline editing of the date, title, author, categories, tags, status and more on both posts and pages without leaving the “Manage” admin sections. No need to load each post or page individually. Simply double-click anywhere in the post or page row and when you’re done, press enter. Alternately, you can click the link in the new “Edit” column. Download.

4. BM Custom Login
A simple way to customize the login screen on your wordpress install. The plugin also includes a psd template for creating your own login screens, so it couldn’t be easier. There is also a flickr group for showing off your custom logins, or for getting inspiration for your own creations. Download

5. Ozh’ Absolute Comments
Absolute Comments is a comment manager plugin that lets you instantly reply to comments, either from the original Manage Comments administration page, or from the email notification, without the hassle of visiting the post first. It beautifully integrates within WordPress and does not add any extra page to manage comments. Everything is done via the original page. Download

6. Plugin Manager
Plugin Manager lets you to view, download and install plugins from wordpress.org from an AJAX’ed interface, instead of manually downloading, extracting and uploading each plugin. Download

7. Dashboard Widget Manager
WordPress 2.5 introduces a widgetized dashboard, but unfortunately no manager for it to rearrange and remove widgets. This plugin fills that need by creating a new admin page very similar to the new sidebar widget manager. Now both widget order and widget options are stored on a per-user basis rather than everyone sharing a common configuration. Great for those multi-user blogs. Via the settings page, you can also choose a default dashboard for users without a customized dashboard of their own and disable non-admins from customizing their dashboard effectively forcing all non-admins to see the dashboard of your choosing. Download

8. WordPress Automatic upgrade
Wordpress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions. The plugin can also can be run in a automated mode where in you do not have to click on any links to go to the next step. Download

9. YATCP-Yet Another Threaded Comments Plugin
Using standard WordPress your comments are linear, despite the fact that WordPress provides the technical ability to thread comments. That way longer discussion threads tend to get confusing, as the reader has to keep track who is responding to whom. YATCP (Yet another threaded comments plugin) tries to solve that problem by leveraging the possibilities provided by WordPress. Download

10. Paged Comments
The Name says it all. It Breaks down comments into a number of pages. Download

New Dashboard Design: Even though you can use all the above 10 plugins to get all the features of WordPress 2.7, you cannot get the redesigned dashboard of it by means of any plugins (until now).

Hope you enjoy this post and try to make your wordpress function like WP 2.7 and test drive it with the help of above plugins (until it comes). Actually the idea of this post came on me when my novice friend asked me to install WordPress 2.7 Beta 3 on his server and wanted me to delete the plugins he no longer needed.That made me delete these 10 absolutely helpful plugins from the plugin folder. At last I was shocked to see only two plugins remain (Akismet and WP Stats) – maybe they will integrate it in WP 2.8.

One question still remains in my mind – Like the new Dashboard Design, they should consider improving WordPress (Ajaxify all pages). Instead of that why the wordpress community is integrating all the available plugins as new features?

This guest post was submitted by Arun. He doesn’t have his own domain yet, but he spends most of his time reading other blogs and now has started guest blogging. If you also have some tips to share with our readers, write a guest article today.

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