WordPress 2.6 Has Been Released!

For all of you bloggers out there, this is exciting news!

For those that don’t know what WordPress is, WordPress is a free open-source blogging platform that can also be used as a CMS to manage a website. And today, about a month ahead of schedule, version 2.6 was released.

Should You Upgrade?

This version has introduced a variety of new features such as version control, increased control over images, options to remotely post new content, image captions, word count, theme previews, customizable avatars, full SSL support, bulk management of plugins, and more. This is clearly an improvement over the list of features in WordPress version 2.5 (and 2.5.1.).

In fact, the developers of WordPress are so excited about this release that they’ve created a video explaining the new features. Take a look at it below:

Problems Encountered After Upgrade

With every release there are many glitches and errors that users are subject to. In fact, it appears that this release is quite reminiscent of the WordPress 2.5 release. Apparently, this past version was released prior to extensive user testing.

So, should you upgrade? I suggest waiting a few days or so, until you are aware of the key issues.

To see what difficulties users are having, visit the WordPress Support Forums. There have been several discussion threads started on these topics. It appears that some key issues include a changed permalink structure (bad if you have nice urls) and logging in to the WordPress backend (due to the new way in which WordPress 2.6 may be handling cookies.)

Also, check out the WordPress blog for more information, as well as a full list of features. The WP blog is also a source of any important details. And who knows, we might see a WordPress 2.6.1 released in the near future.

Update: It appears that the problems that some users encountered were solved by relatively quick fixes. The first problem that dealt with the permalinks issue was only relevant to websites which had index.php in the permalink structure. All other websites were unaffected. The second problem, related to cookies, was fixed when users manually deleted preexisting cookies.

See the WordPress.org Support Forums for additional details.