This article was published on June 11, 2009

Update your blogging engines: WordPress 2.8 is out!


Update your blogging engines: WordPress 2.8 is out!

wordpressWordPress, one of the world’s most used blogging tools and publishing platforms, has reached Version 2.8 today. Go ahead and download it!

Highlights of this release:

  • New drag-and-drop widgets admin interface and new widgets API
  • Syntax highlighting and function lookup built into plugin and theme editors
  • Browse the theme directory and install themes from the admin
  • Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns
  • Allow configuring the number of items to show on management pages with an option in Screen Options
  • Support timezones and automatic daylight savings time adjustment
  • Support IIS 7.0 URL Rewrite Module
  • Faster loading of admin pages via script compression and concatenation

New User Features:

  • New Theme Installer routines
  • Add CodePress syntax highlighting to Theme and Plugin editors
  • Add Documentation(function) lookup to Theme and Plugin editors
  • Use “Custom Header” for menu text and revise Default theme to reflect change
  • Separate Comments into a separate postbox, from Discussion postbox, on the Edit Post screen
  • Make tags accessible without Javascript on the edit screen
  • Don’t ask for confirmation when marking a comment as spam
  • Don’t notify post author of own comments
  • Fix comment paging for static front page
  • Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns as set via the Screen Options tab
  • Make titles into links in Dashboard Right Now module (this was in 2.7.1)
  • Improved Admin icons (grey-to-transparent shadows)
  • Update Blue Admin Color Scheme
  • Press This improvements UI, quoting fixes, plus ability for Contributors to use Press This
  • Add a Cancel Upload button and a Delete link to AdministrationMediaAdd New
  • Add column “Rating” in AdministrationLinksEdit
  • Improve installer to help people entering wrong email addresses
  • Improved Widget user interface
  • Allow editing of all plugin files (Ticket 6732)
  • Improved Plugin search (this was in 2.7.1) on AdministrationPluginsAdd New
  • Per Page option for plugins
  • Move “Install a plugin in .zip format” to new Upload tab under AdministrationPluginsAdd New
  • Show absolute date instead of relative date for scheduled posts
  • Fix tags suggest for post quick edit and bulk edit
  • Permalink editor changes and fix for pages
  • Autosave post/page when pressing Control/Command+S
  • Add toggle all button to the Gallery tab in the uploader
  • Support more than one gallery on the same page
  • Add per page option to Screen Options for comments, posts, pages, media, categories, and tags
  • Overhaul of LiveJournal importer (also add define WP_IMPORTING)
  • Import category descriptions for AdministrationToolsImport > WordPress
  • Show Tools menu for all users so they can access Turbo
  • Check for new version when visiting AdministrationToolsUpgrade
  • In upgrade process, provide better explanation for database upgrade message
  • Fix most popular link category list
  • Add description field for tags
  • WAI-ARIA landmark roles to added to WordPress Default theme
  • “Choose a city in the same timezone as you” for Timezone in AdministrationSettingsGeneral
  • Remove My Hacks option from AdministrationSettingsMiscellaneous
  • Hide email addresses from low privilege users on AdministrationComments
  • Allow case-insensitive logins
  • Login and Registration pages noindex followed
  • Give login screen proper iPhone viewport
  • Enforce unique email addresses in Add/Edit users
  • Make user_nicenames unique during registration
  • Add “Send this password to the new user by email” option to AdministrationUsersAdd New
  • Don’t set user’s Website url to http:// in AdministrationUsersAdd New
  • Add password strength meter to Add User and Edit User
  • Hide things that need to be available to screen readers via offscreen positioning
  • Use invisible class for hiding labels and legends
  • Use a semantic class name for text targeted to screen readers

Features that did not make it into Version 2.8:

  • Some default shortcodes, maybe the most popular 10 from WordPress.com
  • oEmbed support, tied in with shortcodes
  • Better UI for post revisions, maybe an optional field to say what changed in a version
  • OAuth support
  • GeoData for posts, comments, attachments, etc.
  • Template tags to do everything the custom gallery on ma.tt does
  • Menu editor
  • Unbalanced tags across more and nextpage tags (Ticket 6297)
  • Sitemaps by default
  • Refresh of the importers (LiveJournal was refreshed)
  • Gallery post_type
  • Versioning of template edits
  • Documentation links for functions used in currently edited template
  • MPTT (Modified Preorder Tree Traversal) for hierarchies

The complete (and much, much more exhaustive list) is available at WordPress.org. We are going to try the update on our various personal blogs and push it out to The Next Web in the next days. As Boris said in the comments: The Next Web is now running on WordPress 2.8. Took some 30 seconds to update!

Get the TNW newsletter

Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.

Also tagged with