Unique Features

These are some of the more unique features that you will find within the theme:

• Colour-coded categories;
• Ability to use sticky posts with featured post highlighting;
• Integrated Lifestream;
• Dedicated blog category template and home page module;
• Widgetized sidebar with multiple myweblog-specific widgets; and
• 5 great colour schemes to suit your site identity.

Standard Features

These features are probably just as special as the one’s above, but you’ll find these standard features within most of our wide range of themes:

• Integrated Theme Options (for WordPress) to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc. for the theme (see this video);
• Automatic Image Resizer, which is used to dynamically create the thumbnails for the blog posts on the home page;
• Threaded Comments for WP 2.7;
• Trendy drop-down menu’s for your main navigation;
• Custom Page Templates for Archives & Sitemap;
• Built-in Gravatar Support for Comments; and

Links

• Live Demo
• About the Theme
• more from WooThemes

Unique Features

These are some of the more unique features that you will find within the theme:

• 2 different layout options for both the featured area, as well as the header;
• 7 ad spaces (468×60, 300×250, 125×125) in total;
• Sidebar video player;
• Integration of a lifestream;
• 2 widgetized areas (homepage middle column, site-wide sidebar);
• 8 custom Woo widgets; and
• 11 great colour schemes to suit your site identity.

Standard Features

These features are probably just as special as the one’s above, but you’ll find these standard features within most of our wide range of themes:

• Integrated Theme Options (for WordPress) to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc. for the theme (screenshot);
• Automatic Image Resizer, which is used to dynamically create the thumbnails for the blog posts on the home page;
• Threaded Comments for WP 2.7;
• Trendy drop-down menu’s for your main navigation;
• Custom Page Templates for Archives & Sitemap;
• Built-in Gravatar Support for Comments; and
• Integrated Banner Management script to display banner ads of your choice site-wide.

Ad space

The theme has a variety of ad space to choose from, and can display both banner ads and adsense code which you input into your option panel. The ad spaces availabe are:

• 300×250px MPU in the featured area (only for alternative layout)
• 468×60px in the header besides the logo (alternative header layout)
• 468×60px after every single post
• 125×125 widget (upto 4 ads) which you can place in any of the 4 widget spaces.

Links

• Live Demo
• About the Theme
• More from Woothemes

Unique Features

These are some of the more unique features that you will find within the theme:

• Home page slider displaying latest posts;
• Home page visual category boxes with javascript hover effects;
• Attractive category archive template with images with javacript hover effects;
• Dedicated blog category template and home page module;
• 6 widgetized areas (4 footer modules and 2 sidebar modules);
• 7 custom Woo widgets; and
• 12 great colour schemes to suit your site identity.

Standard Features

These features are probably just as special as the one’s above, but you’ll find these standard features within most of our wide range of themes:

• Integrated Theme Options (for WordPress) to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc. for the theme (screenshot);
• Automatic Image Resizer, which is used to dynamically create the thumbnails for the blog posts on the home page;
• Threaded Comments for WP 2.7;
• Trendy drop-down menu’s for your main navigation;
• Custom Page Templates for Archives & Sitemap;
• Built-in Gravatar Support for Comments; and

Links

• Live Demo
• About the Theme
• More from Woothemes

Unique Features

These are some of the more unique features that you will find within the theme:

• Featured Tabber section on the homepage to emphasise your most important messages;
• Page-based homepage which enables you to control all of the content on the homepage;
• 3 different widgetized sidebars;
• Integrated Breadcrumbs, PageNavi and loads of different navigation spaces & options with regards to those navigation sections;
• 3 Additional custom page templates (Archives, Sitemap & Full Width);
• 6 Custom Woo widgets (Flickr, Twitter, Search, Campaign Monitor, Feedburner and Recent Posts); and
• 7 great colour schemes to suit your site identity.

Standard Features

These features are probably just as special as the one’s above, but you’ll find these standard features within most of our wide range of themes:

• Integrated Theme Options (for WordPress) to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc. for the theme (screenshot);
• Automatic Image Resizer, which is used to dynamically create the thumbnails for the blog posts on the home page;
• Threaded Comments for WP 2.7;
• Trendy drop-down menu’s for your main navigation; and
• Built-in Gravatar Support for Comments.

Links

• Live Demo
• About the Theme
• More from Woothemes

Next you’ll begin to notice the new features subtly sprinkled through the new interface: the new dashboard that you can arrange with drag and drop to put the things most important to you on top, QuickPress, comment threading, paging, and the ability to reply to comments from your dashboard, the ability to install any plugin directly from WordPress.org with a single click, and sticky posts.

Digging in further you might notice that every screen is customizable. Let’s say you never care about author on your post listings — just click “Screen Options” and uncheck it and it’s instantly gone from the page. The same for any module on the dashboard or write screen. If your screen is narrow and the menu is taking up too much horizontal room, click the arrow to minimize it to be icon-only, and then go to the write page and drag and drop everything from the right column into the main one, so your posting area is full-screen. (For example I like hiding everything except categories, tags, and publish. I put categories and tags on the right, and publish under the post box.)

It’s all about you. It’s the next generation of WordPress, which is why we’ve bestowed it with the honor of being named for John Coltrane.

Last, but certainly not least, this may be the last time you ever have to manually upgrade WordPress again. We heard how tired you were of doing upgrades for yourself and your friends, so now WordPress includes a built-in upgrade that will automatically notify you of new releases, and when you’re ready it will download them, install them, and upgrade your blog with a single click.

(As with any interface change it may take a little bit of time to acclimate yourself but soon you’ll find yourself whizzing through the screens. Even people who have hated it at first tell us after a few days they wonder how they got by before.)

The Story Behind 2.7

The real reason Coltrane is such a huge leap forward is because the community was so involved with every step of the process. Over 150 people contributed code directly to the release, our highest ever, with many tens of thousands more participating in the polls, surveys, tests, mailing lists, and other feedback mechanisms the WordPress dev team used in putting this release together.

This was interesting to us, a blogging software release we actually blogged about, but the process was hugely informative. Prior to its release today Crazyhorse and 2.7 had been tested by tens of thousands of people on their blogs, hundreds of thousands of you count .com. The volume of feedback was so high that we decided to push back the release date a month to take time to incorporate it all and do more revisions based on what you guys said.

For those of you wondering why we didn’t call this release 3.0, it’s because we abhor version number inflation. 3.0 will just be the next release after 2.9. The major features in new point releases approach also works well for products like OS X, with huge changes between a 10.3 and 10.4.
The Future

Those of you following along at home might have noticed this was our second major redesign of WordPress this year. Whoa nelly! While that wasn’t ideal, and I especially sympathize with those of you creating books or tutorials around WordPress, there’s good news. The changes to WordPress in 2.5 and 2.7 were necessary for us to break free of much of the legacy cruft and interface bloat that had built up over the years (gradually) and more importantly provide us with a UI framework and interface language we can use at the foundation to build tomorrow’s WordPress on, to express ideas we haven’t been able to before. So at the end of 2009 I expect, interface-wise, WordPress to look largely the same as it does now.

That said, we couldn’t be more excited about the future with regards to features. Now that we’ve cleared out more basic things, we are looking forward in the coming year to really tackling media handling including audio and video, better tools for plugin and theme developers, widgets, theme updates, more integrated and contextual help, and easier integration with projects like BuddyPress and bbPress.

Professional blog designer Lisa Sabin-Wilson shows you how to use all the latest upgrades to WordPress 2.5 and helps you decide whether to use the WordPress.com hosted service or self-host your blog with WordPress.org. Whether you’re just venturing into the blogosphere or you want to shift an existing blog to WordPress, WordPress For Dummies, 2nd Edition will help.

* Explore theme development and learn where to find free WordPress themes
* Extend WordPress through plug-ins, CSS, custom fields, and more
* Find out about archiving, interacting with readers through comments, tracking back, and handling spam
* Get the scoop on domain registration, Web hosting providers, basic tools like FTP, and more
* Create a unique blog theme and presentation by using template tags with CSS
* Sign up for WordPress.com, log in, set options, and create a profile
* Install WordPress.org, set up a MySQL database, explore RSS feeds, and organize a blogroll
* Discover the secrets of creating a blog that draws readers
* Get tips on wonderful widgets, upgrades, and plugins you can add to make your blog extra cool
* Learn how to use the Dashboard, manage comments, and make permalinks work with your Web server

With WordPress For Dummies, 2nd Edition on hand, it’s easy to make the most of the free software and build a blog that stands out in a crowd.

The latest release of WordPress is version 2.6.2, released on 08 September 2008. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License version 2.

Features

• Templating system
• Integrated link management
• Search engine-friendly permalink structure
• Support for plugins
• Support for widgets
• Nested categories and multiple categories for articles
• Trackback and Pingback
• Typographic filters for proper formatting and styling of text
• Static pages
• Multiple authors
• Can store a list of users who visit your blog
• Can block site visitors by IP address
• Tag support

History

b2\cafelog, more commonly known as simply b2 or cafelog, was the precursor to WordPress. b2\cafelog was estimated to have been employed on approximately 2,000 blogs as of May 2003. It was written in PHP for use with MySQL by Michel Valdrighi, who is now a contributing developer to WordPress. Though WordPress is the official successor, another project, b2evolution, is also in active development.

WordPress first appeared in 2003 as a joint effort between Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little to create a fork of b2.

In 2004 the licensing terms for the competing Movable Type package were changed by Six Apart, and many of its users migrated to WordPress – causing a marked and continuing growth in WordPress’s popularity.

In 2007 WordPress won a Packt Open Source CMS Award.

Releases

WordPress releases are named after well-known jazz musicians. For example, WordPress 1.2 was code named Mingus (after Charles Mingus).

WordPress 1.5 was released mid-February 2005 and code named Strayhorn. It added a range of new vital features. One such is being able to manage static pages. This allows content pages to be created and managed outside the normal blog chronology and has been the first step away from being simple blog management software to becoming a full content management system. Another is the new template/theme system, which allows users to easily activate and deactivate “skins” for their sites. WordPress was also equipped with a new default template (code named Kubrick) designed by Michael Heilemann.

WordPress 2.0 was released in December 2005 and code named Duke. This version added rich editing, better administration tools, image uploading, faster posting, an improved import system, and completely overhauled the back end. WordPress 2.0 also offered various improvements to plugin developers.

On 22 January 2007, another major upgrade, WordPress 2.1, code named Ella, was released. In addition to correcting security issues, version 2.1 featured a redesigned interface and enhanced editing tools (including integrated spell check and auto save), improved content management options, and a variety of code and database optimizations.

WordPress 2.2, code named Getz, was released on 16 May 2007. Version 2.2 featured widget support for templates, updated Atom feed support, and speed optimizations. WordPress 2.2 was initially slated to have a revised taxonomy system for categories, as well as tags, but a proposed revision led to the feature being held back from release.

WordPress 2.3, code named Dexter, was released 24 September 2007. Version 2.3 features native tagging support, new taxonomy system for categories, easy notification of updates as well as other interface improvements. 2.3 also fully supports Atom 1.0 along with the publishing protocol. WordPress 2.3 also includes some much needed security fixes.

WordPress 2.5, code named Brecker, was released 29 March 2008. Developers skipped the release of version 2.4 so version 2.5 contained two releases worth of new code. WordPress 2.5 saw a complete overhaul of the administration interface and the WordPress website was also redesigned to match the new style.

WordPress 2.6, code named Tyner, was released 15 July 2008. It contains a number of new features that make WordPress a more powerful CMS: you can now track changes to every post and page and easily post from wherever you are on the web, plus there are dozens of incremental improvements to the features introduced in version 2.5.

WordPress 2.6.1 was released on 15 August 2008. It contains several bug fixes. WordPress 2.6.2 was released on 08 September 2008. It contains a handful of bug & security fixes.

Vulnerabilities

BlogSecurity currently maintains a list of WordPress vulnerabilities.

In January 2007, many high-profile Search engine optimization (SEO) blogs, as well as many low-profile commercial blogs featuring AdSense, were targeted and attacked with a WordPress exploit.

A separate vulnerability on one of the project site’s web servers allowed an attacker to introduce exploitable code in the form of a back door to some downloads of WordPress 2.1.1. The 2.1.2 release addressed this issue; an advisory released at the time advised all users to upgrade immediately.

In May 2007, a study revealed that 98% of WordPress blogs being run are exploitable.

In a June 2007 interview, Stefen Esser, the founder of the PHP Security Response Team, spoke critically of WordPress’s security track record, citing problems with the application’s architecture that make it unnecessarily difficult to write code that is secure from SQL injection vulnerabilities, as well as other problems.

Developers

WordPress development is led by Ryan Boren and Matt Mullenweg. Mullenweg and Mike Little were co-founders of the project.

The contributing developers include:

• Dougal Campbell
• Mark Jaquith
• Donncha O’Caoimh
• Andy Skelton
• Michel Valdrighi
• Peter Westwood

Though much developed by the community surrounding it, WordPress is closely associated with Automattic, where some of WordPress’s main contributing developers are employees.

WordPress is also in part developed by its community, among which are the WP testers, a group of people who volunteer time and effort to testing each release. They have early access to nightly builds, Beta versions and Release Candidates. Upgrading to these versions, they can find and report errors to a special mailing list, or the project’s Trac tool.

Sponsored themes

On 10 July 2007, following a discussion on the WordPress ideas forum and a post by Mark Ghosh in his blog Weblog Tools Collection, Matt Mullenweg announced that the official WordPress theme directory at http://themes.wordpress.net would no longer host themes containing sponsored links. Although this move was criticized by designers and users of sponsored themes, it was applauded by some WordPress users who consider such themes to be spam. The official WordPress theme directory ceased to accept any new themes, including those without sponsored links, shortly after the announcement was made. Ironically, the closure of the official site and its consequent lack of up-to-date themes drove many people into downloading themes from unofficial sites which inserted their own spam links into all themes downloaded from them.

On July 18, 2008, a new theme directory opened at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/. It was styled along the same lines as the plug-ins directory. Any theme that is uploaded to it will be vetted, first by an automated program and then by a human.

WordPress native iPhone & iPod Touch app

On 11 July 2008, with the launch of iTunes App Store by Apple, WordPress has also released its native app for iPhone and iPod Touch WordPress app has all the features which WordPress Admin panel have. This app works for all the WordPress.com and self hosted WordPress 2.5.1 or above blogs.

Criticisms

• Several security issues but reasonable turnaround time on fixes. According to Secunia, WordPress still has 98+ security issues as of August 2008
• No built-in ‘Preview Post’ link when writing a post. A link was added to open a preview in a new window or tab, but that has caused its own confusion.
• Not great for large project with a very large amounts (hundreds or thousands) of page (rather than post) content. You could easily outgrow it if your needs grow beyond what WordPress can do. Extendable, but there are limitations. Still very good for small scale projects. Blogging is not the answer to everything for everyone. There are many advantages to making your entire website a blog, but there are some disadvantages to it as well

Latest WordPress Release

• WordPress 2.7 “Coltrane” :  December 10, 2008

Links

• WordPress News
• WordPress.com
• Download WordPress