Wordpress 2.8 News & Articles

OK people, no more playing around. After a month or so in Beta, a ton of bug fixes and tightened security, WordPress 2.8.1 has been made official by the WordPress (news, site) team. 

The newest version of WordPress, more commonly known as “Baker”, underwent two Beta stages after its initial release in June of this year. Combined, the two releases resolved dozens of tickets.

Naturally, the official release of version 2.8.1 addresses several more issues. On their development blog, the WordPress team highlights one issue in particular: information was being leaked due to certain plugins allowing underprivileged users to view admin pages. Not all plugins had the bug, but upgrading is certainly still a good idea. Other highlights include:

• Dashboard memory usage is reduced. Some people were running out of memory when loading the dashboard, resulting in an incomplete page.
• Translation of role names fixed.
• wp_page_menu() defaults to sorting by the user specified menu order rather than the page title.
• Upload error messages are now correctly reported.
• Autosave error experienced by some IE users is fixed.
• Styling glitch in the plugin editor fixed.
• SSH2 filesystem requirements updated.
• Updated the translation library to avoid a problem with mbstring.func_overload.
• Stricter inline style sanitization.
• Disabled code highlighting due to browser incompatibilities.
• RTL layout fixes

As always, you can read the full list of fixes and changes here. Or, go update happy here.

OK, you can toss WordPress 2.8.1 Beta 1 to the wind. Why? because even though it was released only five days ago, the popular blogging platform has just announced the release of 2.8.1 Beta 2. 

Along with the release comes a side note from the WordPress team which states: "We especially suggest, recommend, and beg that plugin developers test their plugins against beta 2 and let us know of any issues."

The notable bug fixes in Beta 2 include: 

• Translation of role names fixed
• wp_page_menu() defaults to sorting by the user specified menu order rather than the page title
• Upload error messages are now correctly reported
• Autosave error experienced by some IE users is fixed
• Styling glitch in the plugin editor fixed
• SSH2 filesystem requirements updated
• Switched back to curl as the default transport
• Updated the translation library to avoid a problem with mbstring.func_overload

You can review the full list of tickets fixed here. 

WordPress Baker

“Baker” was named after Chet Baker, an American jazz trumpeter. Accordingly, the new version of WordPress is pret-ty jazzy. The feature that grabs the most attention is arguably the Themes Browser, which allows users to browse, filter and install themes all from the WordPress dashboard. Such a feat no doubt raises the usability bar for many a Web CMS, including Drupal, whose themes are reportedly less than easy to install without a certain level of tech-savviness.

Want it? Download version 2.8.1 Beta 2 here, and check out the changes since Beta 1 here.

Though WordPress 2.8 was just released, the team behind the ever-popular Web Content Management System has already thrown down another hand on the table. Over the weekend, the WordPress development blog announced that work on the first maintenance release of 2.8 has started. But you don’t have to wait for it.

WordPress 2.8.1 beta is already available for download, and addresses several hiccups. Notable issues that’ve been fixed in beta 1 include:

• Certain themes were calling get_categories() in such a way that it would fail in 2.8. 2.8.1 works around this so these themes won’t have to change.
• Dashboard memory usage is reduced. Some people were running out of memory when loading the dashboard, resulting in an incomplete page.
• The automatic upgrade no longer accidentally deletes files when cleaning up from a failed upgrade.
• A problem where the rich text editor wasn’t being loaded due to compression issues has been worked around.
• Extra security has been put in place to better protect you from plugins that do not do explicit permission checks.
• If you would like to automatically upgrade from 2.8 to 2.8.1 Beta 1, follow these instructions. Thanks for testing WordPress.

Shaking and Baking the Web CMS World

In case you’ve been living under a rock and totally missed the WordPress 2.8 release, we've got a wee bit of background information for you:

“Baker” was released earlier this month and heavily focuses on the visual and usability side of things, specifically themes and widgets. The feature that grabs the most attention is arguably the Themes Browser, which allows users to browse, filter and install themes all from the WordPress dashboard. Such a feat no doubt raises the usability bar for many a Web CMS, including Drupal, whose themes are reportedly less than easy to install without a certain level of tech-savviness. 

Download it

In total, 2.8.1 includes 21 bug fixes (check the full list of bug fixes here), which isn't half bad for a beta. You can download the new version here, and instructions for automatic upgrade can be found here. 

What ho! Is that a new version of WordPress (news, site)  we spy?

The answer is yes. But of course, you probably knew already; WordPress 2.8 was released for immediate download toward the end of last week. Just like most seasoned blogging platform fans, we’ve come to expect big things from the system. This time, the newest version not only fits the usual bill, it also presents some pretty stiff competition for other platforms like Drupal.