Get ready for WordPress 2.6! Not as big a release as 2.5 was but another major rebuild is not what this new version is all about. Look at it this way…
You decide to completely rebuild your house. You get all the needed basics completed like new wiring, plumbing, sheet rock, basic painting and all the other “must-have” projects completed . In other words it’s completely functional and livable but there’s quite a few other projects left to accomplish to make it complete, finish it off as it were. This is what 2.5 and 2.5.1 were all about.
Now comes the next phase where you finish out the rest of it to get it ‘just right’. All the fine trimming, the extra “non-essential but really nice to have” type appliances, a front porch and a patio out back, those extra closets, finish the guest bedroom…all that kind of stuff that really makes life worth living if you know what I mean. By what I’ve seen so far, that’s what WordPress 2.6 is all about. This new version is about adding all the extra features that just had to wait when the 2.5 series was first released and by what I’ve seen so far, I’m impressed. This new generation of the WordPress platform rounds out real nice with 2.6.
Here’s a copy of the new list of features 2.6 brings as posted on Ryan Boren’s 2.6 announcement. You might want to give Ryan’s post a read so you know what’s coming and of course he includes the download link.
- Post Revisioning
- A “Press This” bookmarklet for tumblelog style quick posting
- Caching of static files with Gears for faster Admin page loads
- A new and improved image editing dialog that offers lots of control over the images in your posts
- Theme previewing as seen on WordPress.com
- Built-in word counting in the post editor
- The ability to disable remote publishing for the security conscious
- XML-RPC API for changing blog options
- Better SSL support for the Admin
- Hierarchy-aware paging in the Manage Pages and Manage Categories Admin pages.
- The ability to relocate your content directory
- The ability to move wp-config.php out of your web root
- Drag-and-drop sortable galleries
- Customizable default avatars
- Bulk delete, activate, and deactivate for plugins
- Check box range selection with shift-click
- TinyMCE 3.1.0.1 with lots of bug fixes
- jQuery 1.2.6 with some nice performance improvements
- jQuery UI 1.5
- Lots of bug fixes and performance improvements
As you might notice and as Dougal Campbell explains in his post ; the XML-RPC and Atom publishing protocols are turned off by default with the option to enable either one or both via the “Settings/Writing ” page in the Admin. This was done in the name of increased security as one of the common ways a hacker gets into a WordPress powered site that wasn’t secured properly is by these protocols (among other things) and although in the overall scheme of things this doesn’t happen that often, it’s a good feature to have for those more popular sites that see a lot of traffic.
What this means for the average WP blogger is if you publish using a locally installed blog editor such as Windows Live Writer, Scribefire (Firefox extension) or BlogDesk for example, you won’t be able to use them for publishing after you upgrade to 2.6 until you log into your Admin and enable one or both protocols depending on your needs. I can tell you right now that the aforementioned editors I mentioned only require XML-RPC to be enabled as the old Atom client is not used and by what I understand, not long for this world either.
I haven’t tried installing Google Gears yet but I intend to. Basically what this does is cache all the static Admin files so that the Admin runs much faster and the functions you usually had to wait for such as the link and image popup boxes in TinyMCE will appear almost instantaneously once Gears is installed. To my way of thinking it should take a bit of the load off the server as well since it doesn’t have to serve up any of the “heavy” material any longer as you bang around your Admin. I can’t wait to see how well this works.
Most plugins shouldn’t be bothered by this upgrade either as the core structure of WordPress hasn’t really changed all that much, just added to and improved upon. All my plugins appear to work just fine so far with the small exception of the “must have” “Ozh’s Absolute Comments ” plugin which is just a rendering glitch that looks significantly worse than it really is when replying to a comment using the plugin’s default reply function (not it’s “Advanced Editor” though which works with no problem) from my Admin’s “Comments” page. I’ve since contacted the author about it and it should be taken care of by Release Candidate 1.
I really don’t think there’s going to be much to complain about in this new release as most of the new features are what users have been asking for since 2.5.1 came out plus the finishing touches the dev’s wanted to include. I’ll have more on the subject as I work my way through the beta builds and release candidates as they hit the streets. And just so you know, this site and my much older site are both running 2.6 beta 1 so if you see any anomalies or general weirdness going on (besides me of course although you can mention that also if you wish), please don’t hesitate to let me know through a comment or by using my Contact page.
WordPress is just getting better all the time.
