All posts tagged ‘WordPress’

File Under: Blog Publishing
Dec
14
2011

New WordPress 3.3: Less Flash, More Responsive Design

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WordPress has released version 3.3. Dubbed “Sonny” after jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt, WordPress 3.3 packs in a number of worthwhile upgrades, including a new responsive design that adapts the WordPress admin to smaller screens.

To get the latest version head over to the WordPress downloads page. If you’re already using WordPress you can update from the WordPress dashboard (naturally we suggest backing up your files and database before you upgrade).

Among the changes that make WordPress 3.3 well worth the upgrade is the new responsive admin design. While there are mobile apps from managing your WordPress site on the go, the actual web admin has never adapted to small screens. That changes with WordPress 3.3 and its new responsive admin page, which reflows content to fit the screen you’re using.

Responsive design — that is, using liquid layouts and scaling media to fit any screen size — is moving into the mainstream in a hurry. The past year has seen several high-profile websites relaunched with responsive designs, but WordPress 3.3 is likely the most widely used site yet to embrace responsive design.

Other changes in WordPress 3.3 include a slicker sidebar with “flyout” submenus which put everything in the admin site just a single click away. There’s also a new drag-and-drop uploader, which means you can drag and drop images from your desktop right into the media upload box in the admin (provided you’re using a browser that supports HTML5′s drag-and-drop API). Behind the scenes WordPress is using Plupload to handle the drag-and-drop features. In browsers that support it Plupload will use HTML5; for older browsers it falls back to Flash.

Anyone working on a site with numerous writers and editors will be happy to know that this release features much improved co-editing support. If you’ve ever seen messages like “Warning: [username] is currently editing this post,” you’ll be happy to know that it will now only appear when someone is actively editing a post. Previously the message would often appear even if your co-writer simply left the window or tab open in their browser.

For a complete list of changes and new features in WordPress 3.3, see the release notes.

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File Under: Blog Publishing
Jun
30
2011

WordPress 3.2: Write More, IE Less

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WordPress has released an upgrade for the popular, self-hosted blogging platform. Unlike the last few WordPress upgrades, which focused on improving developer tools, WordPress 3.2 is primarily about changes ordinary users will appreciate. The revamped admin section, for instance, offers a new “distraction-free,” full screen editor, and, as we noted earlier, this version finally drops support for Internet Explorer 6.

If you’d like to upgrade, head over to the WordPress site and download a copy of WordPress 3.2.

The theme for WordPress’ latest incarnation is “faster and lighter.” That’s reflected in new tools like the simplified admin interface, which offers a fullscreen editor mode. The fullscreen mode is modeled on the interface found in writing apps like WriteRoom or OmmWriter, where the focus is primarily the text, and not the bells and whistles on the main new post page.

Another aspect of the faster and lighter motto for WordPress 3.2 means eliminating the cruft, also known as dropping support for IE 6. That won’t of course affect your site’s visitors (unless your theme has dropped IE 6), but it does mean that the WordPress 3.2 admin won’t work in IE 6, something to keep in mind if you’re upgrading a site that has numerous admin users.

For now WordPress hasn’t dropped support for IE 7, though an early outline of what to expect in WordPress 3.2 did say that this release will also start the end-of-life cycle for Internet Explorer 7.

For a full list of the new features found in WordPress 3.2, head over to the release notes page.

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File Under: Blog Publishing, Browsers
May
24
2011

WordPress Drops Support for IE 6

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The popular blog publishing tool WordPress has joined the growing cadre of sites dropping support for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 web browser. The recently upgraded WordPress.com brings a handful of new features and a revamped, cleaner design in the admin pages, but perhaps the biggest news in the release is that the admin pages no longer support IE 6.

Users visiting the admin section of WordPress.com with IE 6 will now see a message to upgrade their browser (the same message will appear in the self-hosted WordPress 3.2 when it is released in June). The WordPress blog says it’s dropping IE 6 because, “it has required increasingly complex code trickery to make the WordPress dashboard work in the IE 6 browser, which was introduced 10 years ago and does not support current web standards.”

WordPress is just the latest in a long list of sites that have abandoned IE 6, including Gmail, YouTube, Basecamp and hundreds of others.

Indeed you’d be hard pressed to find a web developer who wants to keep supporting IE 6. Even Microsoft has set up a website that essentially dances on the grave of IE 6 (after WordPress announced it would drop IE 6, Microsoft actually said “thank you WordPress“).

However, according to Net Applications, IE 6 still has almost 12 percent user share worldwide. In the U.S. the number is just under 3 percent, but in China it’s still nearly 35 percent.

Compounding the problem are the number of corporate intranets that require IE 6. Microsoft is hard at work trying to convince large corporations to upgrade — if you’re still using IE 6, that means you haven’t upgraded to Windows 7, which is Microsoft’s real goal with the kill IE 6 campaign — but for Microsoft’s biggest customers, upgrading means investing millions of dollars in new infrastructure.

While developers may enjoy dropping IE 6 because of its subpar support for web standards, for end users that’s generally not a concern. What is, or at least should be, the bigger concern for users is that IE 6 is less secure.

If you’re part of the tiny segment of users that can — but haven’t — upgraded from IE 6, we suggest doing so. Grab a copy of Firefox or Chrome and join the modern web.

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File Under: APIs, Blog Publishing, Web Basics
May
11
2011

Speed Up Your WordPress Site With Google’s New Page Speed API

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Google’s Page Speed testing tool, which recently went from a browser add-on to a web-based tool, now sports a new API. The Page Speed Online API allows outside applications to send URLs to Page Speed and get back a list of things the site developer can do to speed up the page in question.

If you’d like to try it, head over to the new documentation page and request an API key. Sample apps include using the Page Speed Online API to display suggestions for speeding up sites or even combining the API with the Google Charts API to show a visual breakdown of the page’s resources.

For a more practical example of how the Page Speed Online API can help out your site, check out the latest version of the W3 Total Cache plugin for WordPress. If you’re not already using W3 Total Cache in your WordPress installation, we highly recommend you install it, especially now that the plugin taps into the Page Speed API. W3 Total Cache now sends your pages to the Page Speed Online API and then offers Page Speed suggestions, right in the WordPress dashboard.

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File Under: Blog Publishing
Jun
17
2010

In Walked Blog: WordPress Hits 3.0 With ‘Thelonious’

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WordPress, one of the most popular blogging platforms on the web, reached a new milestone Thursday with its 3.0 release.

This one is nicknamed “Thelonious,” and you can run an update your own WordPress installation by clicking on the update link at the top of your blog dashboard. It’s also available for download.

The big news is that WordPress MU, a multisite tool that can be used to run a whole network of blogs, has become one of WordPress’ default features. You can now manage as many different blogs as you want from one single WordPress installation.

There are a number of updates to the user-facing part of WordPress. The admin has been redesigned: It’s been slimmed down and made easier to navigate with a more accessible layout and color scheme. Some of the menu choices have been renamed to be more descriptive.

There are also new contextual help tabs on every panel inside the admin, so it’s less likely you’ll be left wondering, “what’s this do?” For promoting your posts on Twitter, there’s a new tool that lets you generate a short URL for your post as you’re composing it.

The WordPress team has built a new default theme called “Twenty Ten” to show off all the new features in Thelonious. Much like Kubrick, the old default theme, Twenty Ten is pretty minimal, but it’s a good starting point for learning how to tweak and customize WordPress.

For theme developers and site administrators, WordPress 3.0 has a number of enhancements. The new MU integration is a big plus if you’re running a blog network, or even two different sites that share resources and authors. There’s also a new set of APIs you can use to make building custom headers, backgrounds, menus and custom post types easier. To see the full list of enhancements, see the list at the WordPress Codex.

Here’s a video tour of the new stuff:

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