Hi all,
Due to a serious bug that crept into 1.7.3 we have patched the 1.7.3 release and created 1.7.3a. The bug in question is:
http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/GEOS-2751
Which prevents the editing of newly added feature types without a reload.
The links on the download page have been updated to reflect the changes:
http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/GeoServer+1.7.3
Apologies for the inconvenience.
--
The GeoServer Team