Great news WordPress 2.9 “Carmen” was released this weekend, a little early holiday present from the WordPress team.

While there aren’t as many multimedia features as I expected, they did do a lot of work “under the hood”.  It’s a little harder to appreciate all of that work because it’s pretty invisible to most of us.  Even so, the team did some great work making WordPress even better.

Here’s a list of the main upgrades you’ll find in the Dashboard.

1. All plugins updates can be made at one time and you can check compatibility. In previous versions you had to update plugins one at a time.

Now when you see that you have updates available (in the example on the left the number 14 in the red icon indicates there are 14 plugins that have updates) you can go to the Upgrade option in the Tools section to see a list.

This list will also show the compatibility with your version of WordPress.

It is important to keep your plugins updated. Updated plugins make sure your website is operating correctly and is secure. In short, updated plugins avoid technical issues.

 

 

2. Image editor and alternate text added. Now when you upload a new image you can edit right there without using a separate photo editor. (See the Edit Image button below the Dimensions.)

You will also now see a separate option to add “Alternate Text” right below the Title. This has important SEO benefits.

The “Alternate Text” is also known as an “Alt Tag”. This is the snippet of text that pops up when you mouse over an image.   Be sure to use keywords in the “Alt Tag” it will help improve your chances of being found by the search engines.

3. New trash option. Previously if you deleted a page, post or comment it was gone forever.  If you got a little trigger happy with the delete button too bad.

Now you can put it in the trash. It will be there for 30 days if you change your mind.  After 30 days it’s gone for good.

4. Easier video embed. You can now simply put the URL of video you want to upload into the Visual Editor of the page or post you are editing.

Those are the big changes the core team has made for us “end users”.  You can see a full list of upgrades and changes here, WordPress 2.9 Carmen details.

Here’s the video from WordPress.org outlining these changes. It’s only a few minutes long.

The next release is scheduled for Spring 2010. In the January training we’ll be covering these new features. Enjoy.  What do think about these new features?  What do want to see in the next release?  Tell us in the comment box below.