Posted on January 23, 2007 - by Justin Hartman

WordPress 2.1 Ella

So yesterday the guys over at WordPress launched the newest version 2.1 of the popular blogging software. I of course run WordPress on my site so I’ve just upgraded to 2.1 in the last few minutes. While there isn’t much too look at in terms of visual changes there are a ton of new features which should make things run smoother and more efficiently.

As with any WordPress upgrade in the past the process was as simple as uploading the files and running the 1-Step upgrade script. Simple, easy and fast.

From the WordPress Development Blog site I’ll highlight a few of the newest changes in version 2.1:

• Autosave makes sure you never lose a post again.
• Our 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.
• Our completely redone visual editor also now includes spell checking.
• New search engine privacy option allows you take you to indicate your blog shouldn’t ping or be indexed by search engines like Google.
• 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.
• Much more efficient database code, faster than previous versions. Domas Mituzas from MySQL went over all our queries with a fine-toothed comb.
• Links in your blogroll now support sub-categories and you can add categories on the fly.
• Redesigned login screen from the Shuttle project.
• More AJAX to make custom fields, moderation, deletions, and more all faster. My favorite is the comments page, which new lets you approve or unapprove things instantly.
• Pages can now be drafts, or private.
• Our admin has been refreshed to load faster and be more visually consistent.
• The dashboard now instantly and brings RSS feeds asynchronously in the background.
• Comment feeds now include all the comments, not just the last 10.
• Better internationalization and support for right-to-left languages.
• The upload manager lets you easily manage all your uploads pictures, video, and audio.
• A new version of the Akismet plugin is bundled.