Jun 24 2008
Jeremy Schoemaker

Wordpress 2.6 New Under The Hood Features

By Jeremy Schoemaker 69 comments

EDIT: Looks like Wordpress 2.6 Beta 1 has been released today.

Been playing with Wordpress 2.6 alpha for a bit with the new features. To the users it will appear like nothing really has changed on the surface but under the hood there are a bunch of new features.

My favorite new feature is the post revisions. I can’t tell you how many times I have had the same post open in multiple windows and accidentally over written a previous post. The only thing worse then doing a job is doing the same job over…

Here is a screen shot :


Image Credit

Here is a full run down of the features with links to sites for more information about a specific feature:

  • Post Revisioning
  • A “Press This” bookmarklet for tumblelog style quick posting
  • Caching of static files with Gears for faster Admin page loads
  • A new and improved image editing dialog that offers lots of control over the images in your posts
  • Theme previewing as seen on WordPress.com
  • Built-in word counting in the post editor
  • The ability to disable remote publishing for the security conscious
  • XML-RPC API for changing blog options
  • Better SSL support for the Admin
  • Hierarchy-aware paging in the Manage Pages and Manage Categories admin pages.
  • The ability to relocate your content directory
  • The ability to move wp-config.php out of your web root
  • Drag-and-drop sortable galleries
  • Customizable default avatars
  • Bulk delete, activate, and deactivate for plugins
  • Check box range selection with shift-click
  • TinyMCE 3.1.0.1 with lots of bug fixes
  • jQuery 1.2.6 with some nice performance improvements
  • jQuery UI 1.5
  1. bob cobb said on June 24th, 2008 at 3:04 pm

    I can’t wait for it to be final. There are some awesome features in 2.5, but I think they rushed it. I’ve had so many issues, especially with one of my sites where users contribute posts

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  2. Nicholas Mercer said on June 24th, 2008 at 3:09 pm

    Having tested and toyed around with 2.5 for many months before it was officially released, it was a much needed change and a great upgrade. But it’s very similar to that of KDE 4 where it’s a new foundation, but the future releases are going to truly make or break the application.

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  3. Stak Loaded - How to make money doing nothing! said on June 24th, 2008 at 3:23 pm

    looks cool, i’ll check it out

    [Reply]

  4. Bryan said on June 24th, 2008 at 3:36 pm

    One of the great features of WordPress, besides the fact that it is free, is the dedication they have to their users. They continually roll out with more great features. Thanks for the update!

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  5. Paul said on June 24th, 2008 at 3:52 pm

    I hope that there is no huge problems with the roll out.

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  6. Rajaie AlKorani said on June 24th, 2008 at 4:52 pm

    That was a bit quick in my opinion… But I’m sure it’ll be a while till the final version is out

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  7. Collin - Feed Flare said on June 24th, 2008 at 4:57 pm

    I love wordpress, everytime they upgrade it is that much better. Goog job wordpress team.

    [Reply]

  8. TEmelie said on June 24th, 2008 at 5:07 pm

    I will wait for the final release to come. No more beta for me … no no

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  9. Zander Chance said on June 24th, 2008 at 5:07 pm

    Took me awhile to finally upgrade all of our sites to 2.5.1, and now 2.6 is on the horizon?! DOH!

    Hopefully it won’t be a bug-ridden clusterf*ck like 2.5 was..

    [Reply]

  10. Glenn A said on June 24th, 2008 at 5:10 pm

    I was pleasantly surprised by 2.5, although I just started using it a few weeks ago. The upgrades were meaningful and intuitive. Glad to hear they are working on images, I get tired on wrangling them on WP. Yeah, I’m a bit weary of all the versions, though.

    [Reply]

  11. CVOS man said on June 24th, 2008 at 5:38 pm

    A dozen posts on wordpress - are you an investor? Hired as their PR agency? Trying to kill competing products?

    [Reply]

  12. just Fred said on June 24th, 2008 at 6:42 pm


    A dozen posts on wordpress - are you an investor? Hired as their PR agency? Trying to kill competing products?

    or a fan, there are many of us

    [Reply]

  13. Melvin said on June 24th, 2008 at 6:54 pm

    I think it has still some flaws.. been also playing with it and I like the new features especially the fix of errors in tinymce…

    [Reply]

  14. spidro said on June 24th, 2008 at 7:15 pm

    can’t wait for the new veriosn, but what about automatic plugins install over web? i read about this new feature before

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  15. jatt said on June 24th, 2008 at 8:09 pm

    it was a fast development by the wordpress team. Maybe we all just wait their final release.

    [Reply]

  16. jatt said on June 24th, 2008 at 8:12 pm

    He is not an investor..is he?hehe

    [Reply]

  17. Small Dogs said on June 24th, 2008 at 8:49 pm

    Any guesses as to the official release day?

    [Reply]

  18. Geiger said on June 24th, 2008 at 9:10 pm

    NICE, the revision thing is going to be great. I am looking for some better user management to be built in too though.

    [Reply]

  19. Geiger said on June 24th, 2008 at 9:15 pm

    An update to the post editor would greatly improve things as well. TinyMCE definitely needs the upgrade ;)

    [Reply]

  20. Crunch Now Dot com said on June 25th, 2008 at 12:02 am

    I need a good wordpress blog Just never was a wordpress man

    [Reply]

  21. Ovidiu - GuitarFlame.com said on June 25th, 2008 at 5:28 am

    Is it me or there are a bit too many updates on WordPress?! I barely upgrade and I see an other one.

    [Reply]

  22. Jagdeep said on June 25th, 2008 at 6:17 am

    its good that they keep upgrading, at least it doesnt cost us any money

    [Reply]

  23. FavBrowser said on June 25th, 2008 at 6:25 am

    Where’s 2.5.2?

    [Reply]

  24. Tom said on June 25th, 2008 at 8:20 am

    I’m thinking of switching to Word Press so that I can have threaded comments. Even though I don’t get any comments on my blog, I’m just anal and it bugs me that I can’t have it with expression engine… Yes I know I can buy it for $30.00, but their plugin sucks compared to the one that you use.

    Word Press should have included threaded comments in the build on their new release. It is a very popular and much needed feature.

    [Reply]

  25. Geiger said on June 25th, 2008 at 8:41 am

    I hate to downplay any one community, but I think WordPress is moving a lot faster than PHPBB ever did. I understand how hard it is to move big projects like these. Kudos to the Wordpress crew!

    [Reply]

  26. Geiger said on June 25th, 2008 at 8:43 am

    I like the idea of threaded comments too! It’s like a blog and a forum mixed together!

    [Reply]

  27. Melvin said on June 25th, 2008 at 8:53 am

    but not all themes support the threaded comments right? just like my blog..wtf!

    [Reply]

  28. ShoeMoney said on June 25th, 2008 at 8:55 am

    the brians threaded comments i use is heavily modified to do what I want it to do and also be a lot more lightweight and speedy then the default

    [Reply]

  29. Sports Picks said on June 25th, 2008 at 9:09 am

    Sweet, diff for wordpress bloggers!

    [Reply]

  30. FavBrowser said on June 25th, 2008 at 9:31 am

    It will also allow you to update wordpress automatically :)

    [Reply]

  31. SEI Design Group said on June 25th, 2008 at 9:33 am

    Shoe, I know just what you mean with the open windows - that sounds great. Hope they do something to fix the color bug. I have a very hard time changing link colors within blog posts in IE and Firefox (seems to work okay in Safari). In Safari, I have a hard time adjusting images which works fine in IE and Firefox).

    [Reply]

  32. super blogger said on June 25th, 2008 at 10:02 am

    Too fast for me to catch it up…
    More upgrade…

    [Reply]

  33. revenue said on June 25th, 2008 at 10:29 am

    Looks Like the new wordpress 2.6 beta 1 interesting,but do we need to upgrade it ? :)

    [Reply]

  34. Keith Cash said on June 25th, 2008 at 10:59 am

    Thanks for the inside scoop. I look forward to 2.6, it just seems like yesterday that 2.5 came out. I am glad WP is proactive in their development

    [Reply]

  35. Bill Hartzer said on June 25th, 2008 at 11:40 am

    They still need to do something about all the duplicate content that Wordpress is notorious for generating (archives, archives by date, categories,). I would like to see more SEO-related features in newer versions.

    [Reply]

  36. MB Web Design said on June 25th, 2008 at 3:05 pm

    I must say, I really wish they’d build caching into the next build. Having wp-cache and wp-super-cache as plugins are nice, but that functionality really ought to be there out of the box.

    [Reply]

  37. Austin(Cowsgonemadd3) said on June 25th, 2008 at 6:13 pm

    That sounds really good. I could use a couple of those features for sure.

    [Reply]

  38. Forumistan said on June 26th, 2008 at 2:39 pm

    Wow 2.6 is just really nice, I always prefer wordpress.

    [Reply]

  39. Web Marketeer said on June 27th, 2008 at 7:07 am

    WordPress is heading up the pack, and it is obvious that hey are not resting on their laurels.

    [Reply]

  40. Web Marketeer said on June 27th, 2008 at 7:10 am

    Custom development is king! Will you ever make some of your special custom wordpress developments available to the community as a whole?

    [Reply]

  41. Michael Johnson said on June 27th, 2008 at 12:36 pm

    I look forward to the new features. Better image controls and the word count will be useful to me. I hope it runs a little faster, my wordpress blogs can really bog down at times.

    [Reply]

  42. OSx86 said on June 28th, 2008 at 8:32 am

    I’m currentlyl live testing Wordpress 2.6 Beta 1.

    [Reply]

  43. philip said on June 28th, 2008 at 10:36 am

    Word press is awesome, but it will never be better than Joomla!

    [Reply]

  44. philip said on June 28th, 2008 at 10:37 am

    word press is awesome! but it will never be better than Joomla!

    [Reply]

  45. Arthur said on June 29th, 2008 at 7:00 am

    this is a welcome development for us wordpress bloggers but I would wait ’till 2.6 becomes stable enough to use.

    [Reply]

  46. Mayank Rocks said on June 30th, 2008 at 12:08 pm

    I agree. I didnt upgrade also for one of my blogs. I am waiting for 2.6 now.

    [Reply]

  47. Mayank Rocks said on June 30th, 2008 at 12:10 pm

    Cant wait for this. It looks beautiful.

    [Reply]

  48. Mayank Rocks said on June 30th, 2008 at 12:12 pm

    I usually stay away from beta versions. Their 2.5 stable version was out and in 1 week, there was a security update. So betas would be risky.

    [Reply]

  49. Mayank Rocks said on June 30th, 2008 at 12:16 pm

    Exactly. No beta! :p

    [Reply]

  50. Mayank Rocks said on June 30th, 2008 at 12:17 pm

    I second that. Just sometime ago was 2.5…however 2.5 had bugs. The thing that was pretty weird that a security update in 1 week of stable version release.

    [Reply]

  51. Start Blogging said on June 30th, 2008 at 1:10 pm

    Ah jeeze I really need to upgrade my wordpress. I’m extremely lazy.

    [Reply]

  52. Geiger said on June 30th, 2008 at 6:49 pm

    What the heck is Joomla?

    [Reply]

  53. Zak Show said on July 1st, 2008 at 4:35 pm

    I still use the old WP version, I don’t find the time to upgrade and the plugin stuff it’s too boring. I sould hire someone to help me with these things.

    [Reply]

  54. Dick said on July 2nd, 2008 at 12:52 am

    The screen shot is very inspiring. However the beta version fills me with misgivings. I think that it’s better to wait till the final version appears.

    [Reply]

  55. Shelly Borrell said on July 5th, 2008 at 12:40 pm

    Thanks for the detailed information. I was wondering about it. I’m still using the earlier version and wanted to learn more before downloading.
    http://www.USAcopywriter.com

    [Reply]

  56. Елена Макарова said on July 6th, 2008 at 10:05 am

    Где-то я уже нечто аналогичное читала, причём практически один в один… :)

    [Reply]

  57. Forumistan said on July 7th, 2008 at 9:32 am

    Wordpress is best at all

    [Reply]

  58. Working Man Design said on July 7th, 2008 at 10:29 am

    I think WordPress is determined to upgrade every week just to make life difficult. I was happy with 2.3!!!

    [Reply]

  59. [...] 2.6 new features By David Parkinson Jun.25, 2008 at 1:02 am in Wordpress I was looking at Shoemoney’s blog and ran into a post regarding the next version of Wordpress which is 2.6. No visual changes but new [...]

  60. Wordpress 2.6 - Post Revisions said on June 24th, 2008 at 8:29 pm

    [...] feature is post revisions. Ability to compare versions of posts very cool! Read more here: Wordpress 2.6 New Under The Hood Features - ShoeMoney® __________________ Affordable Hosting Please Use the Forum for Support [...]

  61. Wordpress 2.6 ude nu! : Digital Frontier said on June 25th, 2008 at 5:16 am

    [...] Læs mere hos hos: WordPress 2.6 Beta 1 Wordpress 2.6 New Under The Hood Features [...]

  62. [...] marketing powerhouse Shoemoney is providing an early look at Wordpress 2.6beta1, which is now available for download from the Wordpress development servers: My favorite new [...]

  63. [...] Shoemoney likes Post Revision, the new feature that allows you to compare the same post in multiple windows, excellent for Internet glitches and multiple authors. [...]

  64. [...] Well, the development crew over at Wordpress released Beta 1 of Wordpress 2.6 yesterday and … while I had downloaded the build and run it on a few dev sites, didn’t have time to thoroughly test out the new beta features before Jeremey Schoemaker beat me with a pretty indepth review. [...]

  65. Blognya Newbie » Wordpress 2.6 Beta 1 said on June 27th, 2008 at 11:21 am

    [...] iseng-iseng jalan-jalan ke blog-blognya para master-master luar negeri.. salah satunya blog Seomoney.com baca artikel tentang versi terbaru wordpress 2.6 Beta [...]

  66. [...] the full list of features, links and screenshots, head over to Shoemoney [...]

  67. links for 2008-06-30 | הבלוג של אח"י דקר said on June 30th, 2008 at 3:31 am

    [...] Wordpress 2.6 New Under The Hood Features - ShoeMoney® מבט ראשון על וורדפרס 2.6 הגירסה אמורה לצאת בקרוב ובטא ראשונה כבר שוחררה (tags: wordpress 2.6) [...]

  68. [...] Wordpress 2.6 New Under The Hood Features [...]

  69. [...] Shoemoney likes Post Revision, the new feature that allows you to compare the same post in multiple windows, excellent for Internet glitches and multiple authors. [...]

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