Got Wills

I just noticed the release of “Ella,” the new version of WordPress yesterday. Usually I don’t upgrade my site stuff the first week of a release, and sometimes I never upgrade it, it’s just too much of a hassle in most cases. However, after looking at the list of new features included in WordPress 2.1, I knew I had to have it.

• 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.

Wow, I don’t know if this was available on WordPress 2.0 or not, but I was just able to drag the “Custom Fields” box out of my way, which is great, because it didn’t move enough when I tried to expand the “Trackbacks” box (probably an IE7 bug). Anyway, my favorite feature has to be the Autosave followed closely by the tabbed entry interface, making it easier to see the code view of your post.