News: WordPress 2.1 "Ella" launched
Published January 23, 2007
The latest version of the popular blogging platform WordPress has arrived. Dubbed "Ella", it hit the Internet last night, and with it comes a raft of updates and fixes.
- Autosave makes sure you never lose a post again.
- The 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.
- The completely redone visual editor also now includes spell checking.
- A new "search engine privacy" option allows 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's much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.
- Much more efficient database code, faster than previous versions.
- Links in your blogroll now support sub-categories and you can add categories on the fly.
- Redesigned login screen from the Shuttle project - a previous attempt at improving the look and feel of the WordPress admin interface.
- More AJAX to make custom fields, moderation of comments, deletions, and more all faster. My favorite is the comments page, which now lets you approve things instantly.
- Pages can now be drafts, or private.
- The administration function has been refreshed to load faster and be more visually consistent.
- The dashboard now loads 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.
These new features and fixes make the new WordPress engine a joy to use.
I'll go through a quick 'How to' guide for those that are less experienced in the WordPress install. If you are upgrading your current WordPress install then jump right into step 7.
- Setup a MySQL Database for your WordPress install if you have not already got one.
- Download the WordPress 2.1 install.
- Unzip the downloaded file onto your desktop (or some other easy to access area).
- Rename the wp-config-sample.php file in the WordPress folder to wp-config.php.
- Open the file in your favorite editor (Notepad2 is a good free one).
- Fill the following fields in
DB_NAME - This should be the name of your database created in step one
DB_USER - The username for the database
DB_PASSWORD - The password for the database and user
DB_HOST - This is usually localhost but may not be, you should know, if not then leave it as localhost. - Fire up your favorite FTP client (SmartFTP or FileZilla) and upload the contents of the WordPress folder into the root of your site (unless you want it at /blog or whatever).
- Fire up you web browser and goto http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/install.php this will run you through the install process.
- News: WordPress 2.1 "Ella" launched
- Published: January 23, 2007
- Type: News
- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Sci/Tech: Blogging, Sci/Tech: Computers, Sci/Tech: Internet, Sci/Tech: Personal Tech, Sci/Tech: Software
- Writer: Ashleigh Charlesworth
- Ashleigh Charlesworth's BC Writer page
- Ashleigh Charlesworth's personal site
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Comments
Do I have to reenter everything from 2.0.5?
What about all my previous blogs?
How do you export before 2.1?
All settings are ported across to 2.1 so you should loose no content in the migration. Just follow the steps from Point 7 down, and click through the upgrade wizard at "www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/install.php" (although if you goto /wp-admin as usual it will prompt you to upgrade).
Make the move, not only is it more secure, it has some great features and performance improvements.
For those that would like to make a backup BEFORE upgrading do the following.
Log into your WordPress site (/wp-admin) and check in the Manage tab for the Backup button on the second bar (it comes with WordPress 2.01 and later I believe).
If you don't have the backup plugin then download it and install it as per the instructions on the page.
Goto the backup page, and select all the tables in your database that you would like to backup (select all of them for safety), now select either the Save on Server (make a note of the folder name) or Download Backup / Email Backup (don't use email if you expect the backup to be large). Now click the start button.
After the backup process starts don't navigate away from the page. A progress bar will let you know how far it's got.
After the backup is complete Login to your FTP if you saved it on the server or wait for the download/email to complete.
Your now safe to upgrade to WordPress 2.1, safe in the knowledge that you can just overwrite it with the version you had previously and restore the database if anything goes wrong.
I'd like to point out that some of your themes may not be compatible with 2.1. I freaked out when I found that my pages weren't being displayed as tabs below my header.
If something like this happens to you, contact your theme's author. Most likely he/she already knows about it and has a solution to fix it (usually a minor code tweak).
Had some trouble in the beginning with the TinyMCE display but after clearing the cache that went alright.
Overall i really like the new software. Especially the autosave function.
Glad you all like the upgrade. I've been running the beta then the RC's for a couple of months and have had no real major issues all the way through.
Plugins and style issues seem to be the most common problem, Oh if you have the Spell Check Plugin turned on, turn it off before doing the upgrade, or it all goes bang in a big way.
If you have upgraded with it on, pop onto your ftp, then into the wp-conten/plugins folder and rename or remove the spellcheck.php file. That should bring it all back to life.
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(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/58566)
Well I've upgraded one of my blogs to 2.1, and will be doing the others later this evening. I have to say, the process was quick and painless - One might even call it easy. And so far, I like what I see of the new overhaul, especially the tabbed editor. Thanks for the good article.