WordPress 2.1 Ella Released

January 23rd, 2007 Filed in: WordPress, News & Updates Jump to comments

As a big fan of WordPress, I’m very excited to hear the new release of WordPress 2.1 Ella. Although I haven’t upgraded yet, but it seems like they’ve added a lot of new features and fixed a lot of bugs. One of my favorite new features is now you can set the Pages to be drafts, or private. The new Page option is extremely useful for people who use WordPress as a CMS tool because it allows you to preview the page before publishing it. Now you can backup a Page by turning it to private rather deleting it. Another great feature is now you can set any Page to be your front page, and put the latest posts somewhere else. Version 2.1 also incorporated more AJAX which makes your site maintenance more faster and fascinating. I will definitely upgrade to 2.1 and post more thoughts soon. Download the latest version of WordPress at http://wordpress.org/download. If you have upgraded already, please share your thoughts here.

Teddy Hwang

# 1

January 23rd, 2007 at 1:52 am

I upgraded a couple hours ago and the features you pointed out are working great for me. Personally, I love the auto save feature as this prevents me from accidentally losing any posts. The flexibility of having any page as your front page as well as any page for your posts page is also a great add-on. There are no code adjustments required for your theme to utilize this feature and it definitely makes it a better CMS in general. I highly recommend it.

Jordan

# 2

January 23rd, 2007 at 7:39 am

Just upgraded to the latest version, it is stable and has some nice new features. Recommended updating!

ludwik

# 3

January 23rd, 2007 at 10:04 am

i’ve just upgraded to the newest version and ofcorse there is a lot of problems with plugins ;)

Mpire

# 4

January 23rd, 2007 at 12:59 pm

I just upgraded today to WordPress 2.1 Ella. I think it’s cool and stable. Login screen is a little different. I will comment more after I check out all the features that are in there.

Roy

# 5

January 23rd, 2007 at 2:06 pm

I’ve upgraded my personal blog and my church blog. Tonight I’ll upgrade the pastor’s blog. Both upgrades went without a hitch. Definitely check out the new Akismet spam plugin. The set the “front” page of your Wordpress site go to Options and then Reading. I’m currently scanning for new/updated themes and plugins.

Dean

# 6

January 23rd, 2007 at 3:31 pm

I’m currently using Glossy Blue Advanced and the Customizable Post Listings plugin to display recent posts, recent comments and random posts in the footer of my web site.

Does anyone know if this plugin still works in WordPress 2.1

The following link suggests it might no longer work:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Plugin_Compatibility/2.1

Thanks.

Rich

# 7

January 23rd, 2007 at 7:35 pm

I just upgraded to 2.1 and it seems to be going fine. Gravitars is working as are the other couple of plugins I use.

My only gripe is there doesn’t seem to be any kind of documentation on how to use any of the new features, such as the static home page, which I have been waiting for.

SasaVtec

# 8

January 23rd, 2007 at 8:17 pm

Static page feature is great, go into your admin panel, click on options, then click on Reading, and you can choose to switch to static

Gary

# 9

January 23rd, 2007 at 9:39 pm

Dean; I have upgraded to WordPress 2.1 Ella and am using the GlossyBlue Advanced theme with the Customisable Post Listings plugin. At the moment, from what I can see, there are absolutely NO problems.

Everything is working fine for me and as it should be. It is really a recommended upgrade in my opinion for all WordPress blogs. If you are the person that has A LOT of plugins, then I suggest waiting a couple more days whilst the plugin authors/creators do their work. ;)

James

# 10

January 23rd, 2007 at 11:15 pm

The new WordPress is pretty nice. Everything seems to load a bit faster then before. Lots of nice developer features introduced in 2.1 as well, but I can’t find any documentation for it. WordPress documentation sucks, which is one of the reasons why I’m seriously considering switching to Habari (www.habariblog.com) when it comes out.

riina

# 11

January 24th, 2007 at 6:52 am

james, if you are going to switch, check out expression engine core from pmachine.com. it’s the best.

Alex

# 12

January 24th, 2007 at 9:39 am

I really hope that there will be a german release pretty soon!

I want to upgrade my sites, too!

Damond Philpott

# 13

January 25th, 2007 at 10:32 pm

I’ve upgraded my copy and it doesn’t seem to work to shabby in Safari for Mac OS X. My “Tiger admin theme” is not so compatable and the new picture upload panel doesn’t reveal all the proper buttons. Other than that love it.

Christian Åhs

# 14

January 26th, 2007 at 8:32 am

Wordpress 2.1 works like a charm with GlossyBlue Advanced.

Melle

# 15

January 26th, 2007 at 3:07 pm

I’ve recently upgraded to WP 2.1 and I’m loving every second of it. The new pages function really is a plus, because well, it saves the hassle of deleting them just because you don’t want them right? Only bugger is that some template tags are already deprecated so much themes out there have to update accordingly. Plugins may also not be suitable (I had to disable a few to get my site working).

# 16

January 26th, 2007 at 5:02 pm

Gary: Thanks for the update. Sounds promising. I’ll try upgrading one of my blogs next week.

Corinne

# 17

January 26th, 2007 at 8:40 pm

Initially, I was pretty upset with the upgrade because quite a few of my plugins broke my blog. However, after I figured out how to edit them to my liking, it got better.

Now, I love it. It’s much faster and more efficient.

anton

# 18

January 28th, 2007 at 6:28 pm

nice

Min Thu

# 19

January 29th, 2007 at 6:02 am

I will also be testing that out soon. WP 2.1 is being more than a blog CMS.

# 20

January 29th, 2007 at 6:49 am

Dean: That’s completely fine. Let me know if you have problems of any kind and I will assist you the best I can.

Adam Patterson

# 21

January 30th, 2007 at 3:10 am

I upgraded a few days ago and love it! for some reason the older version were so slow to save pages as the Database got bigger and with there housecleaning on the MYSQL and as well as some streamlining everything moves along at a blazing speed.

Although i did have to update a few plug-ins nothing serious though.

Wady

# 22

February 4th, 2007 at 3:18 pm

Upgraded! It look like a small CMS now…

nic

# 23

February 12th, 2007 at 9:56 am

Good!!
This new wersion looks very profesional
Bye

Ivy

# 24

February 21st, 2007 at 1:49 am

Wordpress 2.1 is amazing. My biggest problem with wordpress before this update was with the lag in the dashboard page. Now it loads as fast as any other page on the site. :)

sharon

# 25

February 28th, 2007 at 7:10 am

I was squirming with excitement about Ella!

Unfortunately, the theme I’m using isn’t compatible with the upgrade. My diner’s blog was wrecked for a coupla days…

I learn things the hard way… :-/

mechille

# 26

March 1st, 2007 at 12:41 am

刚刚用上。感觉很不错。

Colin

# 27

March 7th, 2007 at 1:05 pm

I have upgraded and I love the maturity of Wordpress. It will only get better.

One thing . . . In your post you said “set any Page to be your front page, and put the latest posts somewhere else”

The drop down menu gives me all the pages except “Home” to use as a static page. I want to have a static welcome page and then have a blog under a separate pahe header menu. Any ideas ?