Hot on the heels of the completely revamped WordPress 2.5 release, here comes WordPress 2.6 with even more new features. I was kind of surprised to see another major release so soon but the features it brings are very cool and I will be upgrading my WordPress sites to 2.6 soon.
Let’s take a look at the features WordPress 2.6 has:
- Post Revisions – Wiki-like tracking of edits. Great for multi-author sites as well as individual owned sites to go back to previous versions of posts. I have several posts that I update frequently and just introduced a new sidebar item (click over to the blog to see) to showcase those. I’d like to see if the post revisions feature would enhance that for me!
- Press This! bookmarklet. You could post from wherever in the web like YouTube, Flickr, etc and this bookmarklet will open a Write page with the embed code already inserted for you. Definitely making it’s way to my Top browser Bookmarklets post.
- Google Gears support. WordPress can sweet talk Google Gears into caching frequently used CSS, Javascript files speeding up your WordPress experience tremendously!
- Theme Previews. Means one less plugin for me. I use the Theme Preview plugin to look at the blog design I am working on before you do. Now, WordPress can natively allow you to do that.
- Word Count
- Image captions. Sweet.
- Bulk management of plugins.
- A revamped image control that improves its handling, resizing, etc.
- Toggle between the flash and classic image loader
- Full SSL support and more
If these features don’t convince you to upgrade, how about this tidbit? WordPress 2.6 fixes ~194 bugs!!!
Here is a video review of the highlighted features from WordPress.
I have a feeling that this might tick off the general WordPress users. Because this means another upgrade shortly after the release of 2.5 & the security update 2.5.1. To me though, this just means that I am using a high quality open source software with a high energy development team that brings out the state of the art features into it’s releases very quickly. It’s probably the geek in me.
So, what do ou think about WordPress release schedule? Is it too soon? Are the new features, security fixes big enough for you to upgrade?
Shameless plug: My wife, Shriya, is working on setting up a WordPress shop to help her clients with installs, upgrades, theme customizations, theme development services, etc. Until that site is up, you could contact her through the contact form here or at SpicyTasty.com for any affordable WordPress related help.
The Press This bookmarklet sounds really helpful. That in itself is enough reason to upgrade. I just dread something going wrong every time I upgrade WordPress.
I installed 2.6 on 5 of my blogs (not the two that I’m discontinuing) and I haven’t noticed a speed increase by using Turbo. I’ll be looking to see if the other features are really useful in the way I blog. Luckily, none of my plugins broke.
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By the way, I recommend Hyper Cache if you’re not using a caching plugin.
RT Cunninghams last blog post..Jollibee: Another Philippines Success Story
Sarika, it can be a little daunting. Have you looked at a plugin named WordPress Automatic Upgrade? It could be a real life saver. 🙂
RT, good to see you here! That sounds real comforting to hear that your upgrades went smooth. Although someone with your knowledge of WordPress wouldn’t probably face much problem doing the upgrades. I will have to look at the Hyper Cache plugin. I am using the WP Super Cache plugin right now. Wonder how they both differ.
The post revisions feature seems really cool. I dont know when i will upgrade though. I am still on WordPress 2.3
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Madhur, don’t say that aloud. 🙂 There are active hacks on older WP versions. It isn’t that bad an upgrade to 2.5 especially if used Keith’s plugin.
Now this sounds like a great update. I hate having to upgrade unless it’s a critical one. Some of the features included in this are definitely going to push me to upgrading.
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Mark, me too. But, I just upgraded one of my sites and it went as smooth as it can. Not even the minor glitches i saw with the 2.5 upgrade!
Ks last blog post..Midomi iPhone App – Sing, Hum or Whistle to Find Music
I am definitely going to be upgrading. The posts revision, theme previews, and using google gears are great new features that i am looking forward to using! 🙂
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Hi K,
I haven’t upgraded yet. I have lots of plugins and some customisations to the core that make it a difficult job to do.
Press This! sounds fantastic – I can’t wait to get my hands on that. Some of the other features are nice. I like the idea of the Post Revisions, but how much control do you have over it? I don’t want it storing a separate copy of the post every time I click Save.
As for caching, I don’t use any of the caching plugins yet – although I’m thinking about it… They may break some of my plugins however, which is holding me back.
RT, let me know if 2.6 breaks any of my plugins. There may be a small problem with the detect new version function in the Options page. I’m going to have to release new versions of all my plugins, or finally take the plunge and get them into the official repository…
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I haven’t seen a big discussion on it, yet, but the wordpress site claims that WP 2.6 now fixes the pinging problems with future and saved posts.
My feeling is that 2.6 comes to early after 2.5, not enough new features. Even if that’s not painfull to upgrade when you have one blog. When you have 10, it isn’t the same deal…
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I just barely got used to 2.5 I have 2.6 on a few blogs and while I haven’t noticed anything earth shattering I will get around to stll of my blogs being updated . I still have 2.3 on many
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Yes I think it’s a bit frustrating for the average user. I was quite happy with the old wordpress (2.3 i think) and wordpress 2.5 meant re-learning how to do some stuff. For those of us using wordpress part-time, changes are a big inconvenience. I believe if it’s not broke don’t fix it. In fact I was really disappointed with the new wordpress since I couldn’t even load images! For such a basic feature I thought this would have been fixed before any new release. So anyway I won’t be upgrading to 2.6, besides I’m sure 2.7 is just around the corner anyday now
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I have always installed wordpress via the “one click install” that my host provides. Upgrades have been smooth sailing so far (knock on wood!)
Al
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This is superb news – I simply can’t wait to get all my sites upgraded to 2.6!
I think WP team is doing an awesome job, and it’s only good that they are bringing releases out that often.
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Am I alone in finding WordPress extremely irritating in just about every regard? Once Blogger gets its act together and comes up with some decent templates I think we will see the end of WP. They can’t even come up with a simple one-click upgrade ! Why can’t you just click on ‘upgrade now’ and have everything upgrade automatically !?
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I was a bit surprised to see this version coming out so soon, but I’m glad I upgraded. The little improvements are certainly well worth it. You’re right: WordPress is high quality open source software.
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I’ve finally got round to upgrading my blogs to WordPress 2.6 and all seems to have gone smoothly.
I’ve not really made use of any of the new features yet, but the post revision copies sounds good, altho the bit of editing I’ve done so far today has meant saving of posts is slower – could just be an issue with my hosting, not sure yet.
Hadn’t noticed the Press It feature until I read about it here, so I might check it out now.
Cheers!
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Adding image captions has been on my wishlist for ages. Now if they’d just add a meta description field in the next upgrade, I think that would be my wishlist done!
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Thanks for the news, K! I came across this post looking for an answer about ‘login_redirect’ because it hasn’t been working right for me under WP 2.6 and 2.6.1. I’ve been messing with some plugins attempting to do, what it looks like they’re now going to do in the WP core, hopefully. If I’m reading TRAC correctly. (In my case I would like to first fix the broken redirect upon login which sends me to an error page, and secondly I would like to be able to control where the Redirect goes for users with permissions less than Administrator. I want Subscribers sent to “Profile” or possibly sent back to the page they logged in from, and Contributors/Editors sent to “Write New Post”, and only the Administrator sent to Dashboard.) Do you think this fix will allow this functionality for me? I think TRAC is saying that the new login_redirect fix would allow someone to write a plugin, that would do my requested feature. Anyone out there working on such a plugin? I already tried Weasel’s Login-Redirect Plugin and it didn’t quite satisfy my needs.
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Yes its good