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The New WordPress: Superior Group Blogging

The New WordPress allows for superior group blogging workflow and control.Last week, we discussed the new WordPress Beta version. WordPress announced that it will release an updated beta today, along with weekly updates until the September 24th go live date.

If you are a beta tester, you should definitely install this update, as several bug fixes are being addressed (you should join the WP-testers mailing list).

After kicking the tires on the latest WordPress release, here are some highlights worth talking about:

As discussed in the version feature list, there are some much needed user updates. NowSourcing has done the work for you, so you don’t have to wait until the final release comes out.

Tagging support

Other blogging platforms already had tagging options for some time now, so this is a welcome upgrade:

Wordpress version 2.3 will allow you to assign tags to individual posts.
This feature plays nicely into other tag cloud plugins and integration with Technorati tags.

Improved Workflow

This improvement speaks volumes to the future of blog platforms. Content management systems (CMS) once were thought to be the answer for non-technical users to manage their websites. With blogs becoming more powerful in both features and community reach, blogs will likely steamroll over CMS and the traditional website.

What this update allows is a key piece of the blog publishing cycle. If you have multiple authors on your blog, let’s say that you work on lots of different blog post ideas that are not yet ready for publishing. If you’re like me, you probably save them as drafts (and a local copy, just to be safe). Now, what if you have an author / contributor that wants to show you something before they post it. Where do they put it? Drafts again. So, the drafts area gets crowded.

Not anymore. Now, simply classify your post status as Pending Review.

Wordpress post status pending review for blogs with multiple authors.

Then, you will see a post waiting for pending review:

Wordpress pending review alert

Keep up the great work, WordPress! Looking forward to seeing this version make its way into production!