Wordpress 2.7 was released today and it’s fan-freakin-tastic! The new Dashboard has been totally redone, and is fully customizable. Via the ‘Screen Options’ button you can choose which sections of the Dashboard are visable, and you can drag the sections around to create a more customized look.

One of the other great things about the Dashboard is the addition of QuickPress publishing. If you’ve got a quick post that you want to publish without adding in a lot of custom fields or SEO information you can now write up a post via the QuickPress and save precious time. If you want to write up a full post you still have that option as well but the new look is much cleaner and easier to use. The one downside that I have found is the Write/Edit Post section doesn’t allow you to move all of the boxes around like the dashboard. For instance if I wanted to move the box for All In One SEO or other plugins, but you can move the standard WordPress boxes.

I found a video on the Wordpress Development Blog that lists all of the great new features of WordPress 2.7, so if you’re looking for more information…check it out!

~ GrandmasterB

The guys over at WooThemes have a crazy scary deal going on now through tomorrow at midnight. To celebrate Halloween they are offering up for a limited time a three for one deal!

So, what that means is if you’re in the market for or have been contemplating purchasing one of the killer premium themes from WooThemes…now is the time. If you purchase a single-site license for any theme…you can choose two more for the low price of $70 ($150 if you want the developer license). 

Buy a Single License for $70 USD and get any 2 other themes (on Single Licenses) of your choice; or

Buy a Developer License for $150 USD and get any 2 other themes (on Developer Licenses) of your choice.

That’s a pretty sweet deal, but there’s more! If you’re interesting in joining the WooThemes Club; you can also get a bonus deal. If you sign up between now and tomorrow at midnight for either a three or six month subscription they will toss in three months free of charge. So instead of three months you get six, and instead of six you get nine months…THAT’S A KILLER DEAL! (pun intended).

GrandmasterB is also going to go in on offering up something special. If you purchase a theme during this limited time special offer using my link, and verify the purchase via email and comment here. (more…)

Last night while checking the stats on GrandmasterB, I noticed a something new in the Plugins box on the admin panel. The Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin, is well, just that…a plugin that will automatically upgrade your Wordpress installation. I’m usually not one to mess around with things that claim to be “automatic”, but this plugin actually works. I decided rather than try it out on my live version of GrandmasterB dot com; I would try it out on a local install I have for development.

The installation was very easy, just like every other WordPress plugin. The only thing that I had to do was unzip it and upload it to the wp-content/plugins directory and activate it. After activation you will need to create a new directory in your WP root and name it ‘wpau-backup’ and CHMOD it to 777 (check out the Q&A with GrandmasterB – August 21 for more detail on directory permissions). to enable the plugin to do it’s thing. The great thing about this plugin is that before upgrading your WordPress installation it does a complete backup of your install and database before doing the upgrade. It guides you step-by-step through the process and provides you with the links to download the backups before you continue on.

Through the entire process I think it probably took about 10 minutes to complete; which really isn’t too bad. The great thing about the plugin is that it does exactly what it’s supposed to and it is “automatic”. If you manage multiple blogs and spend a lot of time upgrading them all to the latest version of WordPress; I highly recommend this plugin! If you’ve installed it already on your blog, let me know what you think of it. I’d be interesting in hearing your opinions.

~ GrandmasterB

To my amazement this evening while working on some back-end features for GrandmasterB dot com, I noticed that WordPress 2.6 had been released. The developers have been hard at work getting this new upgrade released and there are a ton of new features that have been included. Most of the features are security related and have been needed for quite some time. They have decided to turn off the ability to remotely post to the blog by default. Many users were not aware of this function and had their blogs hacked…this addition is great!

Other key features include the ability to assign Indenticons to commenters that do not use a gravatar. The admin can create their own default icon and have all users display as that icon. In previous versions of WordPress this was achieved via plugins…now it is included in the installer. If you are the type of admin that does a lot of revisions on your posts, the developers have included another great feature: Post Revisions. This feature will serve as a back-up of sorts allowing you to track back through your revisions to find copy you might have mistakenly deleted.

If you are one of those admins that likes to keep a lot of themes loaded in your WordPress install they have also added a new Theme Previewer; which will allow you to see all of your themes in action on the back-end. There are many, many more upgrades and new features available. Quite frankly, I was just finding version 2.5.1 comfortable…now I get to adjust again. Perhaps I will download the new install and play around on a backup or locally before trying to go live. If you haven’t already…go ahead and download the source files now.

Wordpress 2.6 Download

I’ve linked to a brief video tour of the latest version for your viewing pleasure.

~ GrandmasterB

The long awaited upgrade to Wordpress is finally available for download! I just finished upgrading GrandmasterB.com and it literally took five minutes to perform the upgrade. The preparation for the upgrade did take a bit longer as I did a complete backup of the site and backed up the database (which is always highly recommended). If you are interested in reading about details of the new Wordpress 2.5 upgrade you can check out via the Developers Blog.

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