WordPress 2.9 was released yesterday and amongst the 80-plus improvements / new features is the decline of the famous “Hello World” post.
The first post on any new installation is now titled Welcome and includes tips for new users. Lovely.
Other changes of note are:
- Trash status for posts, pages, and comments (includes restore and permanent delete)
- Display comments in descending date order, consistently (which could have saved me some confusion back when)
- Image editing
- Make codex link open in a new window (great for those of us who refer to it often)
Fortunately, there’s no significant change to the Administration panel, so we don’t have to rewire all those WordPress synapses we’ve built over time.
See the full list of new features in WordPress 2.9.
About Rosalind Gardner
This is good news! All of the comment spammers who continually post to “hello world” will now have to spend their holiday thinking up new things to do.
I always deleted “Hello World”. I also use WP-SpamFree which you can download free from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-spamfree/
Using this on top of Akismet saves a lot of time by automatically deleting spam for you.
Sounds like its a worthy upgrade and great new features.
Sweet. Time to upgrade, then fire up the ol’ plugin testing checklist…
-Jake
It’s honestly about time they got rid of the Hello World post. That really was a haven post for spammers galore. The image editing feature sounds enticing as well.
I still have a few blogs to upgrade to 2.9 but it’s always worth it to upgrade because of the improvements with each version, including security fixes. When upgrading it’s important to BACK UP your WordPress database and ALL of your WordPress files beforehand. If you don’t and something goes wrong you could lose all of your posts.
Yes, It worked fine for me. I just upgraded to 2.9 and working like a charm..
It took less than a minute to upgrade files.
Thanks
At last an image editor!!! What took them so long? For me the biggest time waster with WordPress has been getting images in, set to the right size and looking good. Maybe I’m just a perfectionist… Very welcome addition though. Dave.
Nothing wrong with being a perfectionist, Dave. Actually, I call myself a ‘recovering perfectionist’ and my friends howl… saying they’d hate to have seen when I was an actual perfectionist.
My best hearty thanks for your kindness, carefulnes,
and your precious time. I hope you are having a great
festive time before season holidays.
I wish you all God`s best in life!
Respectfully, Semy
Awesome! The ‘hello world’ was definitely a pet peeve. I like the new feature of image editing. Thanks for sharing the update.
Yes, the switch to 2.9 went well, and the learning continues.
Merry Christmas Ros, and all the Best in 2010
Does this site use WordPress 2.9 version?
Yes, this blog is running on WordPress 2.9.
just upgraded several of my blogs and moved one from a free domain to a dedicated domain, fantastico made it easy to re-install, and the import/export feature worked very well, i only had to re-install my plugins.
but got it all done within about 15 minutes.
= )
I’m a new WordPress user having moved three of my blogs over from Blogger. I found that WP was a bit harder to use than Blogger but recognize the benefits of merging my blogs with my websites. Then a few weeks after I started, WordPress announced their 2.9.
The auto upgrade failed on all three blogs and I lost the admin panel. I had to dig for forum posts on what to do which then involved in saving copies of certain files via FTP, deleting the old version and then uploading the 2.9 version manually. Since I’m not a technie, it took me a good part of a day to find the solutions and then carry out the upgrade. I then had to do some minor repair work to make the blogs look like they did before.
I wish they could have ironed out these bugs or at least provide a FAQ to potential upgrading issues. It seems from forum posts, I was not the only one having these problems. Next time there’s a new version, I think I’ll wait for them to iron out the bugs.
I have found some issues with the new update. My scheduled posts were not posting, the pinging stopped working and I can not edit or add categories. Apparently WP is working on bug fixes and will be coming out with the 2.9.1 version soon. It is being tested in Beta right now.
It is my understanding that they have added video embedding that will now accept the video link instead of embedding the code. I haven’t tried it yet as I have “Viper’s Video Quicktags” installed as a plugin. I wonder if this will eliminate the need for this plugin? Any one know about this yet?
@Clint Cora. I have found that by installing the “WordPress Automatic Upgrade” plugin, that it simplifies all of the upgrades by doing everything for you. It has definitely saved me a mass of headaches.
Thanks. I’ll look into that plugin. Just installed 2.9 for a new blog on dogs and it went off without a hitch. So at least new installations are problem free.
Clint
Your welcome. Hope it helps.
Hi, Ros! I’ve been on your mailing list for ages and I’ve bought your excellent book, so you can see I’m a big fan of yours. I’m glad that you and Ed are having a happy life…There is so much misery in the world that it warms the cockles (what the heck ARE cockles, anyway?!) of my heart when I see happiness where ever it may be. And I thank you for all the good tips and tricks that you have given us via your list. Sail on, Silver Girl…!