Automattic has released an upgrade to it’s popular WordPress blogging platform.
Version 2.9, also known as “Carmen” includes quite a notable number of additions like oembed support, batch plugin updating, a simple image editor as well as a “Windows recycle bin”-like feature for posts.
Under-the-hood improvements are also abound in this upgrade, with over 500 tickets and bugs addressed (according to the blog post on WordPress.org by founder Matt Mullenweg). It is also great to see the official support for rel=”canonical” as well as an automatic database repair feature.
Testing it out, the current 2.9 upgrade has been as smooth as always. However, one small issue I have so far is that the embed support doesn’t work consistently, with some videos not being embed as expected. I’ll have to monitor first and verify if it’s indeed a recurrent issue.
With commentsmeta now available officially, I’ll most probably include avatar support for the Facebook Connect and Google connect feature on my site. Once it’s stable, it will be released as a plugin for public usage. Unlike other plugins, it doesn’t really create a user signup entry in the WordPress database which is ideal for blogs, minimizing the clutter of users in the backend.
At the same time, I’ve also made a small update to my URL Shortener Plugin, bumping it up to Version 1.7, to take into account the inclusion of WP.me shortlink generation in the stats plugin as well as the “Get Shortlink” button included in the WordPress Core.
EDIT: A short video summarizing some of the new features of WordPress 2.9:
