Improved Plugin Search
One of the biggest problems and most frequent complaints we’ve had with the WordPress.org Plugins Directory is the horrible, horrible search results.
No longer. We’re now using Sphinx (a “free open-source SQL full-text search engine”) to power search on the Plugins Directory both from the website and from within your blog’s admin (Plugins → Add New).
I'm not even sure 2 horribles is enough to describe just how bad the old Wordpress search was in the plugin directory. Even if you knew the exact name or the plugin author's exact name, 9 times out of 10 you still would have to go through 3+ pages to find a relevant result (if you even got any relevant results). This weakness basically killed the usefulness of being able to install plugins from the admin area, since you couldn't ever find a plugin you needed. It was seriously just the worst search I had ever seen. From what I've seen so far of the new search, it looks like Sphinx actually returns relevant results. Even that is a major improvement from the old crappy search engine.
Enabling Features
Well, with WP 2.7, I've changed up the theme to the very polished Vigilance theme. It's got a lot of handy features out of the box, including customizable sidebars and a variety of header and sidebar formatting options. It even has a pre-built child theme for modifications. Even more importantly, KOLAAP now has threaded comments. I'm going to experiment with them on this page before seeing if it is something worth having on the anime page. One thing I've noticed is that threaded comments can make it harder to tell where the newest comments are. It'd be nice if there was some kind of auto-hide/expand feature, similar to what they have on Digg.
WP 2.7 RC2
That's more like it. RC2 dropped, and it is rumored to be very close to what will be shipped. Fortunately, this version actually works.
The dashboard widgets actually load and can be dragged/dropped. The backend loads instantly again and the plugin update fetcher works correctly. Even the automatic updater for the core WP files works (Tools >>> Upgrade). All in all, this RC is a great deal more impressive than the last one.
Wordpress Theme Directory
WP has finally offered an alternative to the long-dead and kinda crappy Theme Viewer.
With the success of the plugins directory, we’ve wanted to have those same benefits in a theme directory. Today is the day we start making that happen, with the introduction of wordpress.org/extend/themes/.
Thank goodness. Now there is an official place for everyone to upload their themes, and just like with the plugins directory you can see when the latest update was (along with other relevant information). The directory is sparse right now, but I expect it to get much bigger quickly.