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Affordable WordPress Websites - Kim Woodbridge

WordPress 2.9 Upcoming Features

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Before Coffee in the Morning (by Clearly Ambiguous)

WordPress 2.9 is due to be released on … soon-ish (probably in December) and I thought it would be fun to review some of the upcoming new features.

My biggest hope with this release is that there will not be as many security updates are there were with 2.8. I always say wait until the .1 release to upgrade but I did not foresee .5 with the 2.8 series. Yikes!

 

Cool

  1. Trash Status – when posts, pages and comments are deleted they will go to the Trash rather than being permanently deleted. This is very similar to the way the Recycle Bin works on Windows. I can see this being useful and also contributing to the size of the database.
  2. Image Editing for Media Library – Simple edits will be possible on images in the Media Library. You will be about to rotate, resize and crop images.
  3. Media Embeds – This one sounds good and I’m planning on writing an entire post about it. Basically WordPress will be able to automatically embed media from a variety of sources such as flickr and youtube. For example, if I have a url for a flickr photo and I paste the url into my post, WordPress will be smart enough to find the photo and embed it into your post. The photo will show up rather than the url. I think this is really going to help people use media in the blog posts.

Good

  1. Better feedback on publishing of future posts and pages – I’m not sure what this feedback will be. I thought this was improved in 2.8 by providing the date the post was going to be published rather than saying in 5 days or whatever. I guess more feedback is good, right?
  2. Allow blogs to be available in search engines checked by default – I wonder if this was a problem for people. When WordPress is installed, this needs to be checked so that the blog will show up in search engines. I actually prefer making the selection because I am frequently working on sites that are in progress and don’t want them to show up in search engines until the work is done.
  3. Show correct max upload filesize error message – Correct error messages can only be considered a good thing ;-)
  4. Allow a plugin to do a complete takeover of Post by Email – I don’t think the Post by Email feature has ever worked very well. I’ve never used it. But it looks like a plugin will do this now rather than it being a part of WordPress.
  5. Add means of automatically repairing tables – I’m a little cautious about whether this is good or not. I would rather repair my own database tables and would be hesitant of having WordPress do it for me. I’ll need to see what it actually does.

Makes Me Laugh

  1. Eliminate the redundant and confusing comment threading depth of 1 – Well, yes, a threading depth of 1 makes no sense because there wouldn’t be any depth.
  2. Don’t offer to make a category its own parent – Umm … yeah, that really doesn’t make any sense.

Huh?

  1. Fix race condition with autosave when clicking Publish immediately after entering post title – I have no idea what this means as I don’t know what a race condition is. This is far from the only thing on the upcoming features list, however, that I don’t understand.

If you want to read more about the upcoming features in WordPress 2.9 they are available in the codex. We can count and see how many make us say “what is that supposed to mean?”

photo credit: Clearly Ambiguous



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Comments

  2. Dot says

    2.9? Didn’t we just move from 2.7 to 2.8? New features, whatever. I’d like to see something that lasts for a while, as you say.

    I wish they’d do something about the way the left-side menu jumps back up to the otp when you open a drop-down.

    • Kim Woodbridge says

      Hi Dot – The first version of 2.8 was in June and then we’ve had 5 security patches. I’ve found that WP has 2-3 major upgrades per year. It will be 5-6 months by the time this one is released.

  3. Matthew Kettlewell says

    A race condition is programming jargon for two resources that are dependent on the same resource. It can give bad results, or a deadlocked condition (when each resource is depending on the other one to finish).

    Here’s Wikipedias definition, but it’s a bit on the technical side for most:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_condition#Computing

    I too have been tracking the 2.9 updates with anticipation – a nice early Christmas present!
    .-= Matthew Kettlewell´s last blog ..Add jQuery Accordion Layout =-.

    • Kim Woodbridge says

      Hi Matthew – Thanks for the explanation :-) I could have looked it up but decided to make a joke instead …

      There are some things that I am looking forward to in 2.9 but I’m not sure
      I would consider it a gift ;-)

  8. Manshu says

    I was really hoping for something that shows a Most Popular, Most Commented, Most Viewed Post in a neat little sidebar kind of a thing. But I guess there must be some good plugins doing that already.

    Thanks for the update though, and please do write post when you feel comfortable about upgrading to 2.9.
    .-= Manshu´s last blog ..S&P 500 ETF List =-.

  9. Ajith Edassery says

    The question is how many of this minor release features are really good for blog readers than the blogger? I do not see anything that is done for blogs (other than threaded comments) since last one year. I guess, they should concentrate on two releases per year or something like that after doing thorough research on the real needs of blog readers/bloggers
    .-= Ajith Edassery´s last blog ..Bye bye Twitter! =-.

    • Kim Woodbridge says

      Hi Ajith – There are a lot more behind the scenes fixes than what I listed. And I think a lot of improvements are made for plugin developers. But I think 2 per year is plenty

    • Kim Woodbridge says

      Hi Dennis – cpanel tends to always be a version behind. I’m not sure why that is. 2.7 was a good release and as long as it’s at the current version it should be fine. 2.8 has had way too many security updates.

  12. Adrenalynn says

    I lot of these actually seem pretty awesome and useful. I LOVE the idea of an image editing tool. Having to resize my photos before posting them is extremely annoying, and it’s actually come to the point where I start considering whether to bother including photos when I write posts.
    New releases always mess with my language plugins, so I’m not sure when I’ll upgrade. I’m still working on small fixes from the last one. Sigh.
    .-= Adrenalynn´s last blog ..The Picture Perfect Meme =-.

  13. Allison says

    Looks like some great additions. Love the photo editing. But my last upgrade was such a headache. What should one pay someone else to do an upgrade. I’m barely computer liteate but did design and make my own site. But now 6 months later (just blogging now) getting my head back into the design/ code part is a little scary :). Thx for your thoughts.
    .-= Allison´s last blog ..Is Oklahoma Really God’s Country? =-.

    • Barbara @ VinoLuciStyle.com says

      My admin indicates when an upgrade is available; simple click and it’s done. I typically backup database but shouldn’t be difficult. Are you having to download and install them yourself; maybe a host change would be worthwhile if so.

      • Kim Woodbridge says

        Hi Barbara – Most of the time an auto-upgrade works fine but other times something goes wrong. When 2.8 first came out a lot of people ran into issues. Personally, I always upgrade manually.

        As long as everything is backed up prior to a manual or auto upgrade any issues that might arise can be resolved.

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