WordPress 2.8 Available Now
WordPress 2.8 is now available for download! WordPress 2.8 is nicknamed “Baker” after jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. What you should notice from the begining is that this version of WordPress handles and works faster than previous versions. The nice folks at Automattic attribute this to how they have “changed the way WordPress does style and scripting.”
One of the more prominent upgrades is the Theme browser. Similar to how they updated the plug-in search and install in a previous version, you can now browse through the entire theme directory. (These only include themes in the WordPress directory.) They allow you to search by theme attributes such as color, columns, width and features to narrow down your results. Then you can install your selected theme with one click. Again, Automattic just making things even easier.
Developers will really appreciate another new feature – syntax highlighting! If you are like me, you tend to make code adjustments in text editors rather than the WordPress admin mainly because syntax highlighting makes coding so much easier. Now you can code right in WordPress easily thanks to the CodePress editor. Furthermore, they have adding in contextual documentation as well as a function look-up that seems super handy.
Another treat for developers is the way they have redesigned the widget interface. (This is a bit frustrating if you have already taken the time to become proficient at making widgets, but…) This upgrade will allow you to do things like “edit widgets on the fly, have multiple copies of the same widget, drag and drop widgets between sidebars, and save inactive widgets so you don’t lose all their settings.” We (developers) now have access to “a much cleaner and robust API” to help us create our widgets.
Sidebar are now easier to manage as well. You can manage all your sidebars at the same time rather than having to update each sidebar separately. Also, if you customize a widget, if you take the widget out of active duty, WordPress will remember the settings you selected for later use.
One nit-picky thing though. They’ve changed the color scheme in the admin if you are using the Blue Admin Color Scheme. What was once beautiful and soothing has now become stark and jarring.
For a list of all upgrades and improvments, click here.
Download WordPress 2.8 now (or click the upgrade link in your WordPress admin).
One of my long time friends, Rafael Diaz, just sent me a note about WordPress 2.8 having some trouble with memory issues. If you run into the same issues with your site, here is what he did to resolve the issues:
“already upgraded and ran into some bug like the incoming links memory error. Adding define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’); to wp_config.php seemed to have fixed the error”
Thanks Rafael!