The latest version of Wordpress , Wordpress 2.3 codenamed “Dexter” is out now . This release features some new and exciting features .The release is named for the great tenor saxophonist Dextor Gordon. Here are the new features of this release .

• Native tagging support: It allows you to use tags in addition to categories on your post, if you so choose. Importers for plugins such as UTW , Bunny’s technorati tag etc are also included .
• The new update notificationlets you know when there is a new release of WordPress or when any of the plugins you use has an update available.
• The new canonical URLs feature does things like enforce your no-www preference, redirect posts with changed slugs so a link never goes bad, redirect URLs that get cut off in emails on similar to the correct post, and much more.
• The new pending reviewfeature isgreat for multi-author blogs. It allows authors to submit a post for review by an editor or administrator, where before they would just have to save a draft .
• All new and advanced WYSIWYG editor

The new features look great . I will wait sometime before upgrading . What about you ?

With so many security flaws being found in Wordpress , it becomes necessary to update wordpress and take a backup of your blog . BackupWordpress is a plugin that will allow you to perform automatic backup of your blog at scheduled times . It can even mail you the backups at your specified email .

This plugin operates in two modes

• Easy Mode : This is a simple mode in which you have to specify the backup directory , the backup schedule and settings related to email
• Advanced Mode : In this mode , you get a lot of options which include managing custom schedules , viewing backup log , managing backup presets etc.
  

You can even take backups manually and mail it to yourself if you dont want automatic backups. You can also specify the number of previous backups which you want to keep at the server. You can download this plugin from here .

High Five to Freakitude

There are times when we would like to represent some statistical data in our blog through the use of tables. Tables can be created in WYSIWYG editor through the use of html tags but it is not easy for basic users who dont have much knowledge of html. Even for advanced users , it will be time consuming. Luckily plugins are there to make our life easier .

WP-Table is a plugin by Alex Rabethat lets you create and manage html tables for wordpress. You can also change the look and feel of the table by modifying a css file or you can import a table in csv format. (more…)

The best thing about Wordpress is that its functionality can be increased by the use of various plugins that are available all over the internet. I was looking for a plugin that can display Recent Entries from a specific category in the sidebar , that when i came across it.

Customizable Post Listings is a plugin by Scott Reilly that can display Recent Posts , Recent commented posts , Random posts etc in a customizable manner . The best thing is that the post searches can be narrowed by using Category , Author and stuff.

Installation and Use

1. Download the plugin and unzip it into your plugins directory
2. Activate the plugin from the Wordpress plugin page
3. You can modify the options according to your likes in the plugin editor
4. You can use the following codes to dispaly the relevent thing

To display Recent Postsuse <?php c2c_get_recent_posts(3); ?>where 3 is the number of posts to be displayed

To display Recently commneted posts use <?php c2c_get_recently_commented(3); ?>

There are a lot of functions which you can use and customize according to your needs.

Viper’s Video Quicktags is a plugin for Wordpress that creates various quicktags / WYSIWYG buttons for inserting self-hosted videos (AVI , MPG , FLV , WMV ) as well as website hosted videos (Youtube , Google Video , IFILM ) into our wordpress blog . In Wordpress 2.1 you will need to disable the Visual Rich text editor or else the buttons will not be visible .

After uploading and activating the plugin , the write post/page will appear along with the following buttons as shown below

Just click on any button and you will get a window like

Just click Ok and you are done . The only drawback is that you have to disable the Rich text editor for the buttons to appear in WP 2.1 . Hope a new version is released soon .

Download

Wordpress 2.1 “Ella” has been finally released . Along with 550 bug fixes , it includes any new and cool features . Some of them are

• Autosave makes sure you never lose a post again.
• The new tabbed editor allows you to switch between WYSIWYG and code editing instantly while writing a post.
• The completely redone visual editor also now includes spell checking.
• Redesigned login screen from the Shuttle project.
• The admin has been refreshed to load faster and be more visually consistent.
• A new version of the Akismet plugin is bundled

And lots more …. .

I would be upgrading to it in a short time when i get more info about the compatibility issue with plugins.