Matthew Mullenweg has just announced WordPress 2.6, the latest update of this popular blogging platform. The release is almost a month ahead of schedule, and it seems that WordPress is maturing into a full functioned content management system. These are our top three favorite new functions:
1. Revisions
WordPress finally offers the ability to review post updates, something similar to what we already know from Wikipedia and Google docs. No more banging your head against the wall when you save a mistake by accident. For now, simply scroll down to the bottom of the admin panel, and review or compare the revisions to restore your work. But perhaps more obviously, the revision system is a version-control blessing to all multi-audited weblogs out there.
2. Gears integration
We are about to enter a internet world without the Digg effect! Gears, formally known as Google gears is a open source browser extension initiated by Google, and should allow faster speed for your blogging experience. In future developments, WordPress should be able to periodically synchronize the local server data with the Gear network. Gear enabled blogs should be able to work, even when the server is not present. Cool new development and we can’t wait to see this implemented fully, for now, it’s just a way to store the cache of the javascript and CSS on the client’s computer.
3. Press this!
Finally, we noticed the reappearance of the “Press this!” button. The function makes it easier to blog about anything on the web, by simply clicking a bookmark link when you are on a page that you want to share, similar to Delicious and tumblr. The cool thing is that WordPress made it really easy to add photo’s from the original article, and pull quotes from the article with ease! Add some text and you are ready to publish!
function; which allows editors to quickly post any webpage to their blog using a bookmark.
Check out the release video
Some other cool new functionalities
- 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.
- Customizable default avatars.
- Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
- Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.