WordPress 2.9 Released!

Posted by Crispee | December 19, 2009 |

This morning marked the release of another WordPress upgrade.  I’ve been using the betas and release candidates and have had no issues with it.

All clients should upgrade their installations as always as they see fit, but I would recommend going ahead with this one.

While it’s not a revolutionary upgrade on the surface and, for the most part, looks very much the same—there are a few things that stand out as nice additions regardless.

1. Trash Feature — Now rather than “deleting” a post you trash it just like you would do on your computer. This not only gets rid of those cold sweats every time the “Are you sure you want to delete this?” question comes up, but also keeps you from being a pack rat as much by keeping those little “Draft” status posts around just in case.
2. Image “Editing” — Much has been made of this but it really depends on the user as to how useful it might be. I have a feeling for my clients it will prove to be a very popular way of getting images ready for the post since most do not have Photoshop open 24/7 like I do.
3. Batch Plugin Updates — How many times have I gone into someone’s WP admin to find that 15 plugins need updating.  I’m hoping this will make it much easier to do this rather than one by one.  Go to Tools > Upgrade.
4. Thumbnails — Will help developers of themes get away from custom scripts and fields to create simple post thumbnails for users.
5. Video Embedding — Just paste a video’s URL into a post and it will “magically” put the video into your post without all that embed crap.  This is perfect for getting those cute chihuahua videos onto your blog asap!  Be sure it is on its own line.

The following video has been embedded by a simple URL pasted in:  “http://www.vimeo.com/4749536″.  The URL must be on its own line (unlike the one in this sentence which will remain text.)

I’ve had mixed results with this but will keep experimenting.  There’s many other bugs, fixes and changes but the rest are mainly behind-the-scenes stuff that will help make better themes and sites.

WordPress 2.9 intro video and links to download on WordPress.org