Oh yeah, it’s finally released. I guess some of you might grumbling. why Wordpress team is releasing a new version quite often lately. It’s barely 3 months after  major release of 2.5, follow by bug fix version on 2.5.1. I know i know.. you’re tired of upgrading isn’t it. (especially when the WAU plugin doesn’t work)

I manage to install 2.6 in my personal blog using Wordpress Automatic Upgrade  (WAU) plugin. The fully auto mode is not working and stuck on step # 2 (backup database) as the exec() function was disabled on my hosting. So I choose semi auto mode, skip the DB backup (not recommended if you have tonnes of content) and completed all steps in less than 5 minutes

User interface wise, there is not much different, except on the plugin and manage posts/pages menu. Both now has check box to select multiple option. Plugins also were now separated between active and inactive plugins. On the Plugin tab menu, there is a small red numbers indicating how many plugin is out dated

There are couple of interesting features on this release. For me, the top feature is non other than the post revisions where it keep a version of your saved draft, which can be viewed later. Oh wait, you can compare  them and restore it anytime you want!

You also can preview the theme before activating it from the control panel. I was mistakenly interpreting this feature on my previous post that this is kinda like a theme preview plugin. (saying to myself: SWITCH and PREVIEW is not similar ZAKI!). I definitely need more English lesson.. lol

Then, there is GEARS support to speed up the blog loading espcially on the slow internet connection. It cached the CSS and javascript on the local disk.

What else?? The are new image control (caption, resize, a new gallery), customizing the gravatar, bookmarklet (called press this) bla bla bla and etc.

On the compatibility issue, Wordpress dev team has mentioned that most of the themes and plugins released for 2.5 should be compatible with 2.6. But I found that couple of plugins installed in my blog has a new update released for this version. Plugin dev should have more work now to ensure their plugin compatibility. Kudos to you guys!!

If you still uncertain to upgrade or not, or has not yet upgrade even to 2.5.1, perhaps the video and the full features list will help you to decide if you’re going for 2.6 now.