18th December 2009, WordPress 2.9 has been unleashed upon the world.

It wasn’t that long ago that I was installing WordPress 2.7 on my sites. Which I might add, was when I was woken from my WordPress Slumber.

I think the last time I had used WordPress was way back when version 2.3.1 was around. What a difference a few versions make. WordPress 2.7 was magic. The admin panel was simplified and it all just worked.

Then along came 2.8 and now 2.9 is amongst us. One thing this shows is there is a lot of serious work going on. The gang are madly working away on 2.9.1 to correct some issues which is a very good sign.

Those issues being the breaking of the PHP Curl extensions. Read more at http://wordpress.org/development/2009/12/wordpress-2-9-1-beta-1/. Again they are busy resolving that issue plus a few minor ones.

I’ve been having a bit of cruise around the internet to see what others think of WP 2.9 and there are some interesting sites on the subject.

This one in particular – 10 Things You Need To Know About WordPress 2.9 is a very good review on the new features in WP 2.9. It’s well worth a read.

I know that it’s been at least since 2.7 that everything could be done from the admin panel ( correct me if I am wrong).

So you can easily install new Themes and Plugins from the comfort of your sites dashboard (wp-admin). So you could easily just start off from scratch and get your themes and plug-ins you need quick smart without having to work too hard. The only danger is all the new themes and plug-ins you’ll come across each time as new ones are being added all the time.

So if you do have at least 2.7 (again I could be wrong) upgrading is now a breeze! I’ve still got a few sites with the “OLD” Dashboard which I’ll have to upgrade the painful way. Well I’m hoping it’s not, and get everything up to speed.

WordPress is certainly coming into it’s own and you can’t really call it a blogging script anymore. It can do whatever you want, just about, and what it can’t do – yet, you can make it do it. Well, hopefully I’ll get my tutorial sources up on this site to show you how.

Have a Happy New Year. Not many sleeps to go now.

Cheers

Tim