Wordpress 2.1 Shipped
Just a few short hours ago the first release of Wordpress 2.1 (final) was announced. The new version, also known as “Ella” features numerous improvements. We’ll be upgrading from the RC1 to the 2.1 final shortly, but heres the official Wordpress improvement list for this new release. As always, you can grab it from Wordpress.org.
- 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.


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Awesome. /me upgrading…
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Ok, this kind of bums me out. Last week I upgraded to 2.06 anticipating that it would be at least a few weeks or months before 2.1. Then 2.07 fixed the fixes of 2.06 and I felt a bit safer. Had I known 2.1 was going to be out this quickly, I would have saved my energy and been less safe for a little while longer. How long before 2.2??
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Dave C: according to Matthew Mullenweg, WordPress 2.2 is slated for release on April 23rd.
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@Dave C.: Just wait for final versions before you upgrade next time. If you don’t like hastle at all, wait for WP3
Seeing the list there should be major improvements. I’m going to upgrade!
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Dammit, I just finished a project where the ability to change the homepage would have come in very handy.
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@Dave – Yeah, it’s been a fury of releases, but it will slow down for a while. The WP team has said that the 2.0.x series will continue to be updated with security fixes and important releases. Meanwhile, since 2.2 isn’t very far off, I don’t expect they’ll be many 2.1.x releases unless they’re for security / bug related.