Sneak peeks of WordPress 2.6 features
Although we’re still a few months away from the next major release of WordPress, we can’t help being curious and excited about what’s coming up, can we?
Milestone 2.6
WordPress 2.6 is set to come out on August 7, 2008, according to the WordPress Trac page. Progress is currently at 7%, clearly a long way from completion.
Curious about other releases? Here are the tickets for WP 2.5.2 and WP 2.7.
2.6 Test Run
A live installation of WP 2.6 is up at Chris Johnston’s demo site. Username is admin, password is demo. If you want to test them on your own server, check out the Nightly Builds through the WP testers mailing list.
WordPress 2.6 Features
Several bloggers have brought up some of the major improvements with WP 2.6:
Post revisions
Keep track of a blog post’s revision history.
Identicons, MonsterID, and Wavatar support
Generate special gravatar icons for commenters who have none.
Google Gears support
Add Google Gears functionality for offline blogging.
wp-config.php location can be moved one level higher than WP install
Add sorting to gallery items
Integrate the Reorder Gallery plugin to the 2.6 core.
SHIFT+Click checkbox selection
Select multiple rows of posts, categories, comments, tags, etc. Gmail-style.
Press This bookmarklet
Quick posting bookmarklet that disappeared in 2.5 and will return to 2.6.
Further Reading
More information can be found at the following websites: Quick Online Tips, WordPress Expert, planetOzh, The Blog Herald.
Also visit the Codex page for WordPress 2.6 for further updates.
WordPress 2.5.1 Released, But You Can’t Reset Passwords and 2.5.2 is Close Behind; Will You Update?
Just as Filipino bloggers trooped to U.P. Diliman for the 4th iBlog Summit, WordPress 2.5.1 was released. It has over 70 security fixes and enhancements, including a SECRET_KEY in the wp-config.php file explained in-depth by Ryan Boren.
Now it seems people are debating whether one should hold off for the next WordPress version for several reasons. First, there’s a bug that can potentially lock people out of their blogs should they wish to reset their passwords. This can be fixed by manually editing the password through phpMyAdmin, and there’s a patch for the WordPress update itself.
Second, there’s talk that WordPress 2.5.2 will soon be out. This could frustrate a lot of bloggers who aren’t really comfortable with updating WordPress.
So will you upgrade to 2.5.1 immediately, or wait until 2.5.2 comes out? I’d say it has a lot to do with how confident you are in the blog security of your current installation.
