Well it looks like yet another new version of WordPress is out which means it’s time to start upgrading blogs again. For us we’ll be making the upgrade in the next few days as we always stay on top of updates. As for the new features of 2.6 here’s the run down
Post Revisions: Wiki-like tracking of edits
It basically works in the same way wiki systems and even version control systems work by keeping track of changes. I do not personally have a use for it, but if we started modifying each others posts on the Hawk Host blog it might be useful.
Press This!: Post from wherever you are on the web
A feature I have no use for but it sounds pretty cool:
A few months ago on my blog we started a conversation about the posting bookmarklet in WordPress and which systems we should look to for inspiration, like Flock, FriendFeed, Facebook, Tumblr, and Delicious. From these suggestions and the Quick Post plugin by Josh Kenzer, we developed a Press This bookmark you can add to your toolbar that provides a fast and smart popup to do posts to your WordPress blog:
Screenshot of Press This interface.
For example, if you click “Press This” from a Youtube page it’ll magically extract the video embed code, and if you do it from a Flickr page it’ll make it easy for you to put the image in your post. On my blog I’ve been experimenting with using different categories and the in_category() function — such as video, quote, aside, et cetera — to create a more tumblelog-like format.
Shift Gears: Turbo-speed your blogging
Allows for javascript and various other pieces to be stored on the local machine. I does not do a whole lot right now but I believe it’s just the ground work for more later on.
Theme Previews: See it before your audience does
Now this is a feature I find useful anyways. I can now preview themes without messing it up for current visitors. So it’s a welcomed feature, although I like our current skin so I doubt I’ll find much use for this feature in the near future.
Then there are a flew of others changes:
- Word count! Never guess how many words are in your post anymore.
- Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.
- Bulk management of plugins.
- A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.
- Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
- Plugin update notification bubble.
- Customizable default avatars.
- You can now upload media when in full-screen mode.
- Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default, but you can turn it on easily through the options screen.
- Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
- You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
- Ability to move your
wp-configfile andwp-contentdirectories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts. - Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
- You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.
- A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.
- Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.
- Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.
So I’d say it’s worth the upgrade and I hope everyone who is on our servers upgrades in the future. It’s a good habit to upgrade even if it’s not a security issue. After a while it becomes normal to do the upgrades so less of a worry about the wordpress install being exploited due to not having the latest version installed.