While I usually stay well clear of betas simply to avoid any potential hassles, I was tempted to take a look at some of the changes I’ve read about in WordPress 2.7. They released Beta 3 this past Saturday and I’ve just installed it, taking only five minutes or so before writing a quick post – I’ll do a more indepth review once I’ve had a few days to play around.

My first impression is wow – what a fantastic upgrade to the dashboard! There are esthetic improvements but, much more importently, there are a slew of upgrades to functionality as well. Quick links to add new posts and manage queued comments lies in the header and a nifty sidebar menu guides you to everything else.

Most notable is the new QuickPress feature, a small form built directly into the dashboard that allows for a header, body text, tags and one button publishing. I haven’t looked into it yet but I’m hoping there is a way to add fields to the QuickPress form; I use custom fields for the feature images on the home page and so those fields are necessary for every post I make.

More to come on WordPress 2.7 Beta 3!