WordPress Version 2.9 Is Out!

WordPress.org has finally released the latest version of its popular blogging platform and content management system WordPress 2.9

It hosts several new features and has new improvements incorporated in its architecture and focuses on fixing many bugs present in its predecessor.

WordPress 2.9 is also much more secure and we recommend everyone upgrading their WordPress installations to Version 2.9.

With the importance of Plugins in the world of WordPress, it made sense to make the process of checking plugin compatability and updating your plugins as easy as possible. So now you can upgrade all of your plugins all at once from the Upgrade menu, and WordPress will automatically check to make sure that they’re compatible with the current version you’re running.

Media has also been given some attention. Images now feel more at home in the publishing process, thanks to the integration of image editing.

For example, you’ll now find a built in image editor welcoming you as soon as you’ve uploaded a picture. To edit your images later, head to your media library, choose the image you want to change, and click on the new "Edit Image" button. There’s a crop tool… which you can also set the aspect ratio for… in addition to image rotation, and horizontal and vertical image flipping.

Media embedding has also undergone a major makeover. Support for the oEmbed standard makes copying and pasting video URLs right into your post super-simple.

Now all you need to do is paste the URL onto a line of its own… a nd you’re good to go.

By default you’ll find that there’s support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, & WordPress.tv, with more on the way.

With the new Trash feature, you can say goodbye to trigger-finger regrets when you delete a post, comment or page. Because now instead of "delete", you’ll see the word "Trash". Trashing a post, page or comment moves it to your WordPress trashcan, where it’ll remain for the next 30 days. So if you suddenly change your mind, or find that you made a mistake, WordPress now has you covered. Just head to the new Trash tab and you can restore or permanently delete the content.

Of course there’s plenty of new stuff going on behind the scenes in 2.9, including automatically repairing database tables to keep things optimized for you, comment metadata, custom fields in the contact area, and a lot more features and fixes besides.

You can read the complete change log here!

Download Wordpress 2.9 here!