Wordpress these days seems to be updating its blogging software like I edit my articles! Every 7 day you have a new release. One of the most important features for me is

You can set any “page� to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.

I am trying to use WP for a newspaper site and this type of content manager change is a gift. Other interesting features include

Links in your blogroll now support sub-categories and you can add categories on the fly.

Redesigned login screen from the Shuttle project.

More AJAX to make custom fields, moderation, deletions, and more all faster. My favorite is the comments page, which new lets you approve or unapprove things instantly.

The lossless XML import and export makes it easy for you to move your content between WordPress blogs.

Our completely redone visual editor also now includes spell checking.

I still don’t see any updates for editor. The editor is the worst part of WP and this is why I use Windows Live Writer, it lets me edit and post in just few clicks without messing up HTML. Often I run into problems posting from the WP editor, the external link option (open in new window) never works! If a HTML code is open accidentally (which is not my fault!) then it screws up the whole page. I think the editor needs a major upgrade with lot more editing options like font, size and text color. (It’s often the case that it doesn’t recognize many of the font from MS WORD and the end result is a total mess )

This release is called “Ella”. I wonder why they missed out naming their previous 2 releases.  I will wait for my host dreamhost to let me 1 click upgrade as there seems to be some MySQL minimum requirements.

Upgrade like Ubuntu is planned for future releases of WP

Based on everything we’ve learned in the past 3 years of doing WordPress, we’ve decided to shift to a more frequent release schedule like Ubuntu, with major releases coming several times a year. So, for the first time in WordPress’ history, I have an answer to when the next version is coming out: April 23rd.

 I still love WP and hence the picture of the day