Archive for the ‘Downloads’ Category

WordPress 3.0 Now Available

June 17, 2010 by Emily  

Around the Web,Downloads

WordPress 3.0, which feels like it’s been a long time in the making (though it’s only been about 6 months) is finally out! There are lots of new features in 3.0, including:

• WordPress and WordPress MU have merged, allowing the management of multiple sites (called Multisite) from one WordPress installation.
• New default theme “Twenty Ten” takes full advantage of the current features of WordPress.
• New custom menu management feature, allows creation of custom menus combining posts, pages, categories, tags, and links for use in theme menus or widgets.
• Custom header and background APIs.
• Contextual help text accessed under the Help tab of every screen in the WordPress administration.
• Ability to set the admin username and password during installation.
• Bulk updating of themes with an automatic maintenance mode during the process.
• Support for shortlinks.
• Improved Custom post types and custom taxonomies including hierarchical (category-style) support. (Try the Custom Post Type UI or GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools plugins to see the possibilities.)
• A lighter admin color scheme to increase accessibility and put the focus more squarely on your content.

You can go to this page to read the whole long list of all the new additions to 3.0 or you can just watch this video for the highlights:

You should see the upgrade link appear in your WP admin soon or you can download it here if you want to install manually. As always, if you’re a Swank Web Hosting client and you need help with your upgrade, please contact us!

WordPress 2.8 “Baker” Released

June 11, 2009 by Emily  

Around the Web,Downloads

The newest version of WordPress dropped late in the day yesterday. 2.7 was a very big release, completely changing the admin area and adding lots of new features but 2.8 seems to be more about taking all that new stuff and making improvements to it. They’ve also added a few new features that they probably wanted to get to in 2.7, but just didn’t have the time for. The new improvements and features include:

• Optimizing scripts and styles to make WP faster.
• Adding a theme directory, similar to the already built-in plugin directory, so you can search for and install new themes right from your admin.
• Redoing the widget system for easier use and customization.
• Improvements to the screen options (the tab in the top right-hand corner of the admin). Having a big monitor, I especially like being able to choose 3 or 4 columns on my dashboard. You can also now choose how many entries to display on the Edit Post/Page screens. Check out the tab on any page in the admin and see what options you have, in a lot of places you can get rid of things you don’t use so the admin is less cluttered.
• Improvements to custom taxonomies, which you can read more about in detail here.
• Improvements to the theme editor like syntax highlighting and numbering (you probably don’t care about this unless you are a developer).

Go here to see the full, very long list of improvements in 2.8.

Hopefully, you already have 2.7 in which case you’ll be able to upgrade to 2.8 in seconds with the click of the Upgrade button, but you can still download it here and install the old fashioned way. If you are a Swank Web Hosting customer and still have WP 2.7 or less feel free to contact us for a free upgrade, we’ve noticed an uptick of site hacking lately, especially on WP blogs with version 2.5 or lower.

WordPress 2.7.1 Released

February 11, 2009 by Emily  

Around the Web,Downloads

WordPress 2.7.1 was released late in the day yesterday. It’s a maintenance release as opposed to a security release, so you don’t need to rush to upgrade, but it does fix 68 bugs, which is always a good thing. Assuming you’ve already upgraded to 2.7 (if not, why haven’t you?) all you need to do is go to Tools>Upgrade and it will upgrade your blog in seconds.

The upgrade feature may not work for everyone depending on your host, but it should work for most major hosts. You can check to see if your host is on the list here. The upgrade feature works for all Swank Web Hosting clients, but feel free to contact us if you need help or if you haven’t upgraded to 2.7 yet and would like to. All Swank Web Hosting clients get free WP upgrades!