Great news for the WordPress community of bloggers and web site designers: WordPress 2.1 is available for download. This is really a significant upgrade to one of the most successful blog-and-CMS software applications (the one I use for Roumazeilles.net). New features include (my own selection of the good things):
- A new tabbed editor allows you to switch between WYSIWYG and code editing instantly while writing a post.
- The lossless XML import and export makes it easy for you to move your content between WordPress blogs.
- You can set any “page” to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.
- The upload manager lets you easily manage all your uploads pictures, video, and audio.
- Comment feeds now include all the comments, not just the last 10.
- A new version of the Akismet plugin is bundled.
- Redesigned login screen from the Shuttle project.
- More AJAX to make custom fields, moderation, deletions, and more all faster.
- Our admin has been refreshed to load faster and be more visually consistent.
- Much more efficient database code, faster than previous versions. Domas Mituzas from MySQL went over all our queries with a fine-toothed comb.
- Better internationalization and support for right-to-left languages.
It seems all great (and it is). However, I want to stress that existing WordPress 1.x blogs should not jump immediately into the new version. The main reason for being cautious is the unavailability of new versions of some of the plug-ins your site may be using. In my case, I will need a little more time for the transition.
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