Jun 11 2009
WordPress 2.8 Officially Released Today
WordPress 2.8 Now Available
WordPress 2.8 is officially available for download
The big news – Themes can now be downloaded and installed from within the Dashboard, just like plugins.
This makes WordPress even easier to use and customize. No need to download, unzip, and upload a new theme ever again. Just browse the theme gallery, pick your poison, and install it. Of course, the theme has to be available through the regular WordPress.org theme gallery. Custom themes, professional themes, and themes released by developers on their own web sites only will still need to be manually installed.
Widgets have also undergone a face lift and some usability improvements. You can now save inactive widgets, so all the information you’ve entered in text boxes, etc., will not be lost if you remove a widget from your sidebar. You can add more than one copy of a widget. And you can drag and drop widgets between sidebars.
For the adventurous among us, WordPress has introduced syntax highlighting in the code editor. This makes it much easier to see what you’re doing if you need to tweak your templates or style sheets.
I upgraded this blog without incident using the Automatic Upgrade that was introduced in WordPress 2.7. Before I updated, I did a full back up and I de-activated all plugins. Both of those steps used to be performed automatically by the WP Automatic Upgrade plug in. Since that plugin is no longer compatible with WordPress – be sure you do a manual back up and plugin deactivation. Both steps are crucial to a clean upgrade!
If you are interested in WordPress’s official announcement, the video below should give you a good overview of all the new features. (It stutters and runs in fits and starts if you have a slower internet connection.)
Similar Posts:
Print This Post
No responses yet
Follow Me on Twitter
