New Features: Linking, Sorting, Paging
Oh my!
It’s that time of year again, when the folks over at WordPress.org start putting the finishing touches on the next version of WordPress (in this case, version 3.1), and the lucky users of WordPress.com are automatically included in the beta testing, giving you all access to new features about a month before they are officially released. This is awesome, because you get early access, and your feedback can help us make even more improvements. I’m personally pretty excited about the new features you’ll be seeing around here starting later tonight, as they are additions I’ve been wanting for a long time. Here are the new things you can expect to see the next time you’re in your dashboard:
Easier Internal Linking
Yay. Finally. Literally. Seriously. What?! I know, right? 🙂
You’re writing a post (or a page) in WordPress. You mention something you’ve written about before, and think to yourself, “I’m going to link to that last post!” What do you do? You might open a new tab and search for the older content in your dashboard’s list of posts, or you might go to your live blog and find it. Either way, you have to find that content and get the URL, so that when you click on the link button in the post editor, you’ll have it ready. Right? What’s that, 5-8 steps, depending on which way you do it? No more!
With our sexy new internal linking feature, you can now enter any URL to create a link just like you used to, OR you can search your existing posts and pages right there in the link popup. A combination of pre-loading, autocomplete, and some ajaxy goodness make the new link creation tool a joy to use (and man, that popup is so much faster!). We hope this addition spurs you to make more connections between pieces of content on your site, which will make it easier for your visitors to find more related content from you. One more time, all together now: Yay! (Right?)
Column Sorting
When you’re in your dashboard and you click to the Posts section (or Pages, Media, any screen with one of those listing tables), do you ever wish you could click a column header to change the display, like to sort things by date, alphabetically, by author, or other criteria? I know I wish for it all the time. And now we have it! This feature is a product of a successful Google Summer of Code student project, proof that the program is a great way to get involved with WordPress development. The little arrow next to the column heading (in my example screenshot, the Date column) shows you which column is determining the sort order, and if it’s ascending or descending. Just click on the column header to sort by that column, or to reverse the order.
Better Pagination
If you have a lot of content, you may have run into a mildly annoying experience at some point when paging through screens in the dashboard that list your posts, media files, etc. Clicking forward and back is easy enough, as is skipping to the first or last couple of screens, but what about the middle? Say you had 23 screens worth of post listings, you’re on screen #6, and based on the dates, you think the one you’re looking for might be around page 15 or so. You would have had to click several times to advance a few screens at a time until you reached the screen you wanted. No more! With our new pagination style, those quick forward/back and first/last links are still there, but now you can jump right to any screen by just changing the editable number shown in the pagination area (and hitting enter). Sweet!
Ajax Search Results
Reviewing search results will be faster and no longer require screen refreshes in the dashboard, thanks to the addition of ajax to the search results screen. Go Speed Racer!
Revised Blue Color Scheme
In the personal options in your profile, you have a choice between gray and blue dashboard color schemes (the default is gray). We updated the gray color scheme a while back, but didn’t update the blue one at the same time. (Remember when we moved from the dark header to the lighter header? Good times.) The new blue color scheme is lighter, cleaner, and based on the same shadings as the gray color scheme but with a blue hue so that your focus can remain firmly on your content creation, without distraction. If you’ve never tried the blue color scheme, now would be a great time to give it a whirl and see how you like it! Are there other colors you’d like to have as options? Let us know in the comments!
Improved IE9 Support
If you’ve had any trouble using drag and drop features in the dashboard or have had any problems with the Visual editor on the post creation screen when using Internet Explorer 9, sorry! Improvements have been made to make these features work smoothly in the latest Microsoft browser.
Good stuff, yeah? Things to bear in mind: these are new features, and though they’ve been worked on and tested for some time, you may find a bug we missed. If one of these features gives you any trouble, please let us know. You can leave a comment on this post within the next two weeks, talk about it in the forums, or contact support through the usual channels.
I hope you enjoy these additions as much as we enjoyed making them for you. Happy blogging!
Update: November 20, 2010 11:30am
Thanks to your reports we’ve been able to find and fix a couple of bugs that we didn’t encounter in our own advance testing.
- We fixed a conflict with the CSS plugin wordpress.com uses (the incompatibility did weird things to content in the editor), so reported problems like content being all underlined or bolded unexpectedly should no longer be happening.
- We fixed an issue with IE8 for internal linking. We are still working on issues with IE7. (But seriously, using outdated browsers is generally not a good idea. Update your browser!)
If you are still encountering issues with the new features, when you leave a comment or contact support, please state what operating system and browser you are using so we can troubleshoot faster. Examples: “I’m using Firefox 3.9 on Mac OSX 10.5.” “I’m using Google Chrome on Windows 7.”
Thanks!
- November 19, 2010
- Features
you just made my life easier with the Internal Linking apps – great stuff guys!
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i am a WP.org user as well 😦
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What a wonderful early Christmas. All these improvements are great. If I may suggest one… On the dashboard page, under the clicks section: It would be nice to know what page the clicks are coming from. You show the links that were clicked but sometimes the same links can be found on different pages or posts over a span of many years. It would be great (but not necessary) to know exactly which page the link came from. Just an idea.
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Thanks for news features… 🙂
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I’ve been waiting for the internal linking feature. Thanks!!
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Linking – guarded yay, as it seems inconceivable that it hasn’t been there from the beginning! First thing I noticed when I started using WordPress. But mustn’t grumble, it’s here at last!
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*Easier Internal Linking*
Yes! Yes! Yes!
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Who knew I could get so excited over “Column Sorting”?! New features sound great, can’t wait to try them.
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Great stuff. Yay!! How much will it cost? Where do I sign up?
What? Huh?
It’s all free and I don’t even have to ask for it? WordPress, you’re better than Santa!
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I am delighted I found wordpress.com. At a time when new features are being introduced and are welcomed by my predecessors. As a new user and a beginner in web publishing, I will need the new features and i’m sure they will enhance my learning very fast. Thank you for your generousity
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Very good feature many thanks
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Excellent stuff! loving it all, and i also completely agree with Susann about the theme-changing-avoiding-construction-site-blog-while-in-transition… really is something to think about. i love you guys. xx
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Thank you very much! It’s thoughtful little tweaks like these that make WordPress far and away the best blogging platform I’ve ever used. I love the idea of the improved internal linking, and the changes to column sorting and pagination will also be very useful. I also really like the new blue colour scheme – I had my dashboard set up with the old blue scheme for ages, and noticed it had changed (for the better!) when I logged in this morning. It’s much easier on the eyes and it looks great!
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Amazing! I’ve tried linking to older posts a few times before, and it involved so much headache that eventually I stopped bothering. Thumbs-up to Internal Linking! The Blue color scheme is also much a improved, great look. I get bored with the same visuals, and would love to have some additional color choices in the future! Great stuff!
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I love the internal linking feature! Vain as I am, I do link a lot to my own posts…
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All these improvements are great, but particularly the easier linking function. I used to lose the will to live trying to link posts; now I’m looking forward to trying out this feature. Since I always want to have my cake and eat it too, I’m looking forward to the day when you can add Google Friend Connect and when it becomes user-friendlier to add certain html codes from other sites.
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thank you so much for this fantastic feature…I’ll be sure to use it 🙂
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The link feature is just awesome. You guys rock. Thanks. 😀
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Thank you….can’t wait to work with the new features!
I would love a way to see how the e-mail will look before it is sent out like the “preview” of the blog. Sometimes I publish something and the e-mail that goes to subscribers does not look the way I thought it would.
You guys rock!
Hunter71 🙂
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Hm, pretty yummie updates! 😉
Esp, that internal linking feature comes in very handy.
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FABULOUS! especially the first feature. that will be really helpful.
thanks, and thanksgiving!
jane
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All are wonderful features! Thank you very much 🙂
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great!!! Im new to wordpress, but the internal linking was the first I was missing. what a timing. 😉
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Wow, I loooove that new linking feature. Haven’t tried the other new stuff yet but will see about it now. This is very exciting. Thank you!
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Thanks a lot. Great features that I’m sure I’ll make the most of.
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“With our sexy new internal linking feature, you can now enter any URL to create a link just like you used to”
For the benefit of anyone using IE7 or IE8 who is suddenly no longer able to link properly, you’re not crazy. I did report this issue to support and they are aware of it and working to fix it. So if you encountered the below scenario, hang in there and we’ll hopefully be OK very soon.
I used to be able to highlight a word in Visual tab, click the link icon, get a simple pop up to paste my link in, select open in new page and close. Now when I click the link icon I get the box above and it doesn’t work; If I paste in a link and click Update…nothing happens. I can use the LINK button when on the HTML tab, but that will not set the URL to open a new page or tab – it redirects the current broswer page to the linked URL. (It *might* be possible to get around that by manually typing/editing the link text…not certain).
Can’t wait to use the search feature when this is fixed.
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Wow, great news. I am particularly excited about internal linking, but all the improvements show how much you really care about US. It is strange to say, but I love wordpress.com
rgs
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Thank you for making these much needed changes! This is the reason I moved to wordpress over a year ago and never looked back– you listen to your users and aren’t afraid to change things. You guys rock. 😉
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I’m so excited! Woot!
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Sorry to be a buzzkill, but… While I haven’t (yet) tried out the internal linking, I must say that external linking has been made more difficult, at least in my experience… One, when I have more than one external link in the same post, the new pop-up “remembers” the last URL posted, so I have to erase it and replace it for a new one, it’s not exactly smoothest… Two, before I was able to choose between external links opening up in the same page or in another page, now that feature seems to have been removed….
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The ‘remembering’ of the last link used was a result of including a ‘save state’ aspect to the feature so help speed things up. Never fear, the field is meant to be blank except for http:// by default, and is being fixed right now.
The other thing you mention, choosing “opening up in the same page or in another page” hasn’t gone away, it just looks different. Instead of having to use a dropdown menu every time, now there’s just the one checkbox. This is where the ‘save state’ comes in handy: if you have marked the checkbox to open links in new tabs (most people want to open in new tabs, not actual windows), it will stay that way by default so you have one less thing to select each time.
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what a cool features………… !!!
always the best one in WordPress for us…….
many thanks………….
best regards
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really good addition of features.. will save a lot of time and effort.. wordpress is the best blogging site to use.. the features are user friendly and very easy to understand for any new blogger.. it took me no time to get along wordpress.. very excellent work and keep going WORDPRESS team.. 😀
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Not only do i love this feature. But I guess……I guess…i sorta love….you….too.
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Your continuous effort is what makes WordPress the easiest and most effective blogging platform.
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psyched about the simplified linking! thanks
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the improved URL link sounds great.
Alternatively I tried using the Zemanta thing to focus on my site but that didn’t work too well even once they included my blog on their index.
Anyway, i’ll definitely use the URL link but I wold have thought that the publish to Facebook fan page was higher priority? Still waiting for that!!
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Hopefully this will save us all a bunch of time!
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great thanks for internal linking…
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Yes – really good feature.
If only it worked on my IE8 … 😦
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wheee!
I do like the new linking, but that simplified pagination is the best.
I love early presents.
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I’m liking the new blue too!
But can I still do external links the old way? I’m finding the new system has a mixed blessings…
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You can still type in links however you like.
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@Jorge Bernal Thanks for the clarification! I luv luv luv you guys at WordPress! You churn out the best updates evah! 😀
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Very nifty and wanted features. The sorting I was trying to patch together myself without much luck, so yay. Only prob Bob… will it break my plugins? 😉
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Since there are no plugins allowed on wordpress.com, I’m not sure what you’re asking, unless you also have a self-hosted blog and are asking about that. If the latter, the answer is that it will depend on your plugins. If they are coded according to WordPress standards, then they should be fine, but if they are not coded well there is always the chance of a conflict.
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Non of my readers will recognise any of your new things but I’ll like them very very much 😀
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how wonderful soon i will be such a good blogger with all of these tools.
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OH FINALLY!!!
This will make posting so much easier!!
I always end up opening half a dozen windows trying to find my post!! LOVE IT! Thank you!!
Hopefully it will be available for wordpress.com users and not just .org.
.org seem to have a lot more features than we do… it’s about time wordpress.com stepped up to the plate and gave us things like flash widgets and the like..
We really need to all be on the same level. I’ve thought about switching to .org main reason i haven’t is because I can’t be bothered with the hassle.
Please wordpress.com – please try and give us more features…..
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WordPress.com actually has many more custom features than wordpress.org, they are just rolled into the UI instead of being called plugins. If you really need Flash widgets, then you would be best off to try self-hosting instead, since we will not change the rules regarding JavaScript and Flash for security reasons. There are some good hosts listed at http://wordpress.org/hosting and some of them have 1-click installs, which is about as little hassle as you can get (aside from here, of course!). 🙂
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Great! Thanks a lot 😀
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Great stuff! Thanks a lot. 🙂
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Really amazing features. I didn’t see this post except after I’d already posed on one of my blogs, and I was a little annoyed by the new linking system, because when I tried to add a link to my post, it didn’t work at all. I don’t know what’s wrong with it, when I pasted the link into the URL box, it got pasted, but the problem is when I click Update, the pop-up doesn’t go away, it just stays the same way; the same if I just pasted the URL and pressed enter. In the end I had to switch to html view and do it there.
I don’t know whether I was making a mistake, didn’t understand exactly what I had to do, it was a problem with my connection, or something’s wrong with that pop-up.
Wish you all the best,
Bushra
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Hi Bushra. We experienced some unexpected bugs (especially with IE browsers), but were able to fix them quickly. Sorry for any inconvenience! If you’re still encountering bugs like this, please contact support for help.
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It may be “sexy” but the linking feature did not work. I had to do it myself via the HTML window. 😦
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We experienced some unexpected bugs, but were able to fix them quickly. Sorry for the inconvenience — if you’re still encountering issues, please contact support for help.
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@Jane Wells Thanks for the feedback! I’ve checked for the checkbox you mention and, yup!, it’s right there….
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Hey well done, looking good! Is there a way to include the old URL auto-complete with this new linking tool? It made my job blogging about local Irish bands a lot easier. I’ll miss URL-complete a lot if it’s gone for good.
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Isn’t auto-complete of URLs a function of the browser? We have an auto-complete in the search for internal links, but for external links, how would WordPress know what URLs existed to autocomplete?
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What’s happened? I’ve never had any probelms adding an external link before but since the design-change, I can’t! The link dialogue box opens, I add the URL, click ‘open in new window’ and then click ‘UPDATE’ but nothing happens. The screen behind the dialogue box is black and the dialogue box stays there indefinitely after I’ve clicked ‘update’. It only closes when I close it down.
Help required, please!
Many thanks!
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We experienced some unexpected bugs (especially with IE browsers), but were able to fix them quickly. Sorry for any inconvenience! If you’re still encountering bugs like this, please contact support for help.
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Thanks WP! A real improvement, especially the internal linking. These new features will save me a lot of time.
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My mind has not changed. In fact I am more and more convinced that WordPress is the best. You continue to be outstanding, and this is another way you are helping and improving things. Thanks for being there for us and this is another wonderful idea.
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I personally like the pop up feature of linking old blogs to the new one you’re working on….when did you say this was coming out?
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Nice. 😀 Does the ‘search’ include the tags and categories or is it just the content of the posts? If they’re not included how about two radio buttons right beside the search field where I can choose between ‘content’ or ‘categories/tags’?
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I’ve wanted a more granular or advanced search as a feature for a while now, myself! Hopefully we can work on that in the future. Thanks for the suggestion!
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I am happy everyone is happy with the new features, My question is why does it not work for me. I cannot use the link features on a post, I used both my vista and xp system and Internet explorer 8 and i just get a black screen. Anyone go a fix. thank you
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We experienced some unexpected bugs with IE, but were able to fix them quickly. Sorry for the inconvenience! If you’re still encountering issues, please contact support for help.
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Yeah!
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Internal linking makes a lot of sense. The ability to easily link to anyone on the world with no simple way to link to yourself was clearly a problem. It seems like it could be even easier though if you could @yourself or @yourlinks similar to Facebook’s status messages. Nonetheless a welcome improvement. Peeps concerned with SEO are probably frothing at the mouth… Keep up the good work Automattic & friends!
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The internal linking is awesome but I wasn’t able to get my external linking to work. Is there a different step to have it work?
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Writing external links is the same as always… just type or paste the URL in the text field at the top of the popup to add the link.
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I do NOT like this new feature. I am having trouble linking externally. I keep getting an error message 😦
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Sorry to hear it! Can you post the details of the error message in a message on the support forums or in a message to our support staff so we can investigate? Thanks.
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Organization!!! Love that. Thank you for it!
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Oh my goodness! I cannot TELL you how happy I am to see the new internal linking feature! This is fabulous. THANK YOU so much! Don’t you people ever sleep? How do you do it?!? You’re amazing!
Two votes for sepia/brown…. 🙂
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I’m crazy about the link feature and have already used it effectively.
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How about cleaner urls, custom 404 pages, custom page titles, will these be looked at anytime soon
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Is there a specific URL format you’re looking for?
What do you mean by custom page titles? You can name your pages anything you like, and if you use the custom menus feature, you can call it something different in your navigation. You’ll need to be more specific with this one, please.
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Fantastic! Thank you very much!
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One thing I don’t like about the new internal link tool:
It uses absolute links rather than relative links.
I don’t want pingbacks from internal links, so I still have to manually delete the “http://domain.com” every time.
I totally LOVE the interface and everything else about this new tool, though.
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That’s not really a good fix, it breaks links in your feed and in the future we’ll do pingbacks on relative links too.
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Thank you so, so much! This new linking feature will be a huge benefit to me in organizing my project! You all are just amazing.
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Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!!!!! Sw-eeeet! As a blog increases in volume it gets more difficult to link to older posts, you’ve solved this one just in time!
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So many great new features at once! It’s like Christmas a month early! 😀
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i like the linking…but it doesn’t work at all for me. it doesn’t hyperlink the word when i paste the link and press update…thats the idea yes?
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We experienced some unexpected bugs (especially with Internet Explorer), but were able to fix them quickly. Sorry for the inconvenience! If you’re still encountering issues, please contact support for help.
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Yes, that’s the idea. We experienced some unexpected bugs (especially with Internet Explorer), but were able to fix them quickly. Sorry for the inconvenience! If you’re still encountering issues, please contact support for help.
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just using new features, all great tools… tnx
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I like the new blue color scheme, but there are other colors that you should use too, like a black, yellow or even a red. Something else, just to have the options.
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THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU AND THANK YOU! How did u know these were the things I were hoping for? It’s like a miracle come true!
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Yay! I’m especially grateful for the new linking feature. Yep, I agree…it’s sexy!
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When I first read about it I didn’t quite understand, but when I used it, it was awesome! I really liked the new URL thingy. Thank you guys!
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I would like a linking feature like that for comments too, because my readers pose questions I´ve already answered in different posts and I have to go and get the url before I click on link button in comments section (once opened, it won´t let you open a new page to search for your older post on a new page). In comments you cannot even choose if you want your link in the same page or in a new one. So this two aspects would be a complete improvement for me.
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Awesome! These are quite nice features to use. Quite Lovely I might add.
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Thank you! This will be super.
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It is definitely much easier to add internal links – noticed it a little while ago. Question though… Any chance we can have an option to no-follow internal links? While I’ve got your ear, is there anything that can be done about internal links creating pingbacks, too? 🙂
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Am I the only one for whom the new linking does not work for external links? Or am I the only one who can’t figure it out?
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You may have encountered a bug when we first launched the feature. We fixed the bugs as quickly as possible, though, so if you are still having trouble, please contact support for assistance.
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I noticed some of these features today as I was adding and editing posts and really appreciate them! Thank you!
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great feature! WOW! i like it!
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wordpress have given many things for us for free ,,,so be loyal to it and stop complaining 🙂 if u have problem contact in https://wordpress.com/support/contact/
wordpress rockssssssssssssss
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Hi, friends at WP. Thanks for reading my mind – that is, if I’d thought of how to do it – on the easier internal linking. It always takes me time to look them up, copy, paste, etc. Your shortcut is a bonus!
Also, I noticed the more pleasing blue in my theme and wondered what was going on. But this is another improvement….you’re always thinking, aren’t you??
Thanks again,
Dan
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Glad you like it!
(Yes, we’re always thinking. 🙂 )
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Linking and pagination features – very handy! sometimes adding these small features makes all the difference. Much appreciated!
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these features are really good 😀
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Many thanks! I look forwards to working with these new features.
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Great stuff! Thanks.
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I dig.
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I like the new internal linking feature, but it’s a bit irritating that it remembers the last URL you used so you need to delete it each time before you can enter a new one. Otherwise, love it!
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Yep, that was an inadvertent side-effect of wanting it to remember the state to speed up some other things. We’re fixing it!
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Wow. that sounds great!
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awesome thankyou!
Linky link link link!
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ok
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That’s great Application & idea Mrs. jane…….Good succes For you frens…
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Excellent stuff! loving it all, thank you very much…….!
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That’s so practical…
Thanks from the bottom of my heart!
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Love you WP!! 🙂
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I NEED the http:// blue again! I hate having to delete that before I copy and paste the link in the box for the link!!!!!
even though I use shortcuts… it’s shorter to just hit delete when it’s blue than to have to get the cursor in the box select all and then hit delete!
I rarely link to old posts! I just do a lot of new links! PLEASE, PLEASE make it blue again!!!
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That was not an intentional change, sorry. It’s been fixed.
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