WordPress 2.9 has been released on the 19th December 2009. Here are some of the highlights of WordPress 2.9:

1. Global undo/”trash” feature, which means that if you accidentally delete a post or comment you can bring it back from the grave (i.e., the Trash). This also eliminates those annoying “are you sure” messages we used to have on every delete.
2. Built-in image editor allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images to show them who’s boss. This is the first wave of our many planned media-handling improvements.
3. Batch plugin update and compatibility checking, which means you can update 10 plugins at once, versus having to do multiple clicks for each one, and we’re using the new compatibility data from the plugins directory to give you a better idea of whether your plugins are compatible with new releases of WordPress. This should take the fear and hassle out of upgrading.
4. Easier video embeds that allow you to just paste a URL on its own line and have it magically turn it into the proper embed code, with Oembed support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv (and more in the next release).
5. We now have rel=canonical support for better SEO.
6. There is automatic database optimization support, which you can enable in your wp-config.php file by adding define('WP_ALLOW_REPAIR', true);.
7. Themes can register “post thumbnails” which allow them to attach an image to the post, especially useful for magazine-style themes.
8. A new commentmeta table that allows arbitrary key/value pairs to be attached to comments, just like posts, so you can now expand greatly what you can do in the comment framework.
9. Custom post types have been upgraded with better API support so you can juggle more types than just post, page, and attachment. (More of this planned for 3.0.)
10. You can set custom theme directories, so a plugin can register a theme to be bundled with it or you can have multiple shared theme directories on your server.
11. We’ve upgraded TinyMCE WYSIWYG editing and Simplepie.
12. Sidebars can now have descriptions so it’s more obvious what and where they do what they do.
13. Specify category templates not just by ID, like before, but by slug, which will make it easier for theme developers to do custom things with categories — like post types!
14. Registration and profiles are now extensible to allow you to collect things more easily, like a user’s Twitter account or any other fields you can imagine.
15. The XML-RPC API has been extended to allow changing the user registration option. We fixed some Atom API attachment issues.
16. Create custom galleries with the new include and exclude attributes that allow you to pull attachments from any post, not just the current one.
17. When you’re editing files in the theme and plugin editors it remembers your location and takes you back to that line after you save. (Thank goodness!!!)
18. The Press This bookmarklet has been improved and is faster than ever; give it a try for on-the-fly blogging from wherever you are on the internet.
19. Custom taxonomies are now included in the WXR export file and imported correctly.
20. Better hooks and filters for excerpts, smilies, HTTP requests, user profiles, author links, taxonomies, SSL support, tag clouds, query_posts and WP_Query

At that time I was in Hong Kong and couldn’t upgrade this site at all. I came back yesterday and perform the upgrade today. Everything went smoothly, looks like not much changes that will break plugins compatibility as the current version of my plugins works fine as well.

I hesitated for the upgrade because I know WordPress 2.9.1 will be out latest by next week but nevertheless, I still proceed on with the upgrade.

I also updated my resume to reflect my final academic results and now the academic section of it is 100% completed.

WordPress 2.7 has been released after being delayed for about a week.

Here are some of the features according to the blog post:

Next you’ll begin to notice the new features subtly sprinkled through the new interface: the new dashboard that you can arrange with drag and drop to put the things most important to you on top, QuickPress, comment threading, paging, and the ability to reply to comments from your dashboard, the ability to install any plugin directly from WordPress.org with a single click, and sticky posts.

Digging in further you might notice that every screen is customizable. Let’s say you never care about author on your post listings — just click “Screen Options” and uncheck it and it’s instantly gone from the page. The same for any module on the dashboard or write screen. If your screen is narrow and the menu is taking up too much horizontal room, click the arrow to minimize it to be icon-only, and then go to the write page and drag and drop everything from the right column into the main one, so your posting area is full-screen. (For example I like hiding everything except categories, tags, and publish. I put categories and tags on the right, and publish under the post box.)

WordPress 2.7 also introduce the Automatic Core upgrade which unfortunately do not work for me. I am still very skeptical after automating web script upgrades. I prefer to do it the manual way so that I can control what I want.

I will release the updates to my plugins shortly and if I have the time, I will upgrade this site to WordPress 2.7.

Download: WordPress 2.7

WordPress 2.6 has been released.

Here are some new features of WordPress 2.6:

• Post Revisions: Wiki-like tracking of edits
• Press This!: Post from wherever you are on the web
• Shift Gears: Turbo-speed your blogging
• Theme Previews: See it before your audience does
• Word count
• Image captions under your image
• Bulk management of plugins
• A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG
• Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries
• Plugin update notification bubble
• Customizable default avatars
• You can now upload media when in full-screen mode
• Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default
• Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security
• You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues
• Ability to move your wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts
• Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
• You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one
• A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions
• Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI

2.6 is pretty much identical to 2.5 from a plugin and theme compatibility point of view, so upgrades from 2.5 should be pretty painless. The 2.5 branch will no longer be maintain so everyone is encouraged to upgrade.

» Download WordPress 2.6

PS: The current version of my plugins should work well with WordPress 2.6 except WP-DownloadManager. Nevertheless, I will release updates to all of them tomorrow.

I spoke about Developing Plugins For WordPress on Wednesday, 18th June 2008 at the Singapore PHP User Group, June 2008 meetup.

This is the second time I am speaking at the user group. The first time was in December 2007 meetup where I spoke about the same topic WorPress Plugin Development With PHP.

I think this time my pace was slightly better.

By embedding this video, it breaks my site XHTML validation!

Powerpoint Slides and Source Code can be downloaded here.

WordPress 2.5 has been released and WordPress.org has a refreshed look based on WordPress 2.5 new redesigned administration backend.

New User Features in WordPress 2.5

• Cleaner, faster, less cluttered dashboard
• Dashboard Widgets
• Multi-file upload with progress bar
• Bonus: EXIF extraction
• Search posts and pages
• Tag management
• Password strength meter
• Concurrent editing protection
• Few-click plugin upgrades
• Friendlier visual post editor
• Built-in galleries

New Developer Features in WordPress 2.5

• Salted passwords
• Secure cookies
• Easy taxonomy and URL creation
• Inline documentation
• Database optimization
• $wpdb->prepare()
• Media buttons
• Shortcode API

Download: WordPress 2.5