A few days ago, the folk over at Automattic released WordPress 2.6. This release was so ahead of time (apparently it was released a month early) that I feel like it snuck up on me.
First of all, kudos to all involved for getting out a new release ahead of time. And secondly, they’ve done a great job adding some really useful features and security fixes to this version. But the apple of my eye is the reinstatement of the Press This bookmarklet.
I know they’ve added all sorts of cool features like post revisions for multi-author blogs, easy insertion of image captions, and more user-friendly management of plugins; but I really liked the Press This bookmarklet, and kind of mourned its loss when it was removed from WordPress 2.5. The Press This bookmarklet makes it much easier to post about other web content on your own blog, in a way that’s similar to the Tumblr bookmarklet. Aaron Brazell describes the Press This bookmarklet as follows:
…it allows the user to be on any website, click the bookmarklet and get a miniaturized version of WordPress admin with options to snip text, photos from the page, quotes or video embeds.
I still haven’t upgraded (see below to find out why), so I wonder if the Link This bookmarklet has been reinstated too…
It’s not all rosy
Some bloggers have had problems after upgrading to 2.6. Joost de Valk warns WordPress bloggers using Windows hosting that the upgrade may mess up your permalinks. Upstart Blogger upgraded only to find that all of his categories and category permalinks had been messed up, despite the fact that he took all the necessary precautions like deactivating plugins, etc. Apparently he’s not the only one, either. He says that that there’s a solution, but it involves messing with your database, which is not for the fainthearted. Being a seasoned member of the fainthearted club, and having just moved all my blogs and sites from one host to another, I think I’ll wait a bit before upgrading, as usual.
More about WordPress 2.6
10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.6 from Technosailer
WordPress 2.6 from WordPress.org
What You Need To Know About WordPress 2.6 from Weblog Tools Collection
