This is just a quick post to let everyone know that it looks like WordPress 2.6 is already available to people that choose to upgrade their WordPress installation via Fantastico.  

I’m not actually sure if availability varies by web host, so for the record I have only confirmed it with Hostgator, which is my web host of choice.

For those of you that love upgrading your WordPress install, you’ll be happy to know that WordPress 2.6 is now available for download!   Here is a quick video provided by the WordPress team (3.5 minutes):

New features include:

• Google Gears integration
• Press This! bookmarklet
• Wiki-like Edit Tracking
• Theme Previews
• Plugin Bulk Management
• Post Word Count
• Plugin Update Notification Bubble
• 194 Bug Fixes, Security Updates, and more!

If your concerned about upgrading to the newest branch of WordPress, don’t be:

2.6 is pretty much identical to 2.5 from a plugin and theme compatibility point of view, so upgrades from 2.5 should be pretty painless. The 2.5 branch will no longer be maintain so everyone is encouraged to upgrade.

Now, I’m off to start upgrading my WordPress blogs!

As you may have noticed, WordPress 2.6 failed to meet its original release date (July 7th).   It looks like a few things weren’t quite ready, and one of the great things about this WordPress team is they usually make sure things are good before making an official release.   I believe the new release date is July 14th, which is next Monday.

In the meantime, if you like to be on the cutting edge and test things, WordPress 2.6 Beta 3 is now available for download.   You can see a list of what is new with Beta 3 here.

Once again the fourth of July is upon us, and for those of us in the United States, this marks a paid vacation day the day we celebrate our independence and freedom!

Though I plan to take the day off, I did want to offer a quick note I ran across about WordPress.  I wanted to bring to everyone’s attention a post by Planet Ozh about what WordPress plugin authors need to know about WordPress 2.6.  The post covers changes to both the wp-content directory and the wp-config.php files and will likely force many plugin authors to update their plugins for WordPress 2.6. If you are the author of a WordPress plugin, you should probably check this out.

I hope everyone has a happy and safe holiday!

If you’ve noticed that I haven’t been talking a whole lot about WordPress 2.6 lately, it is because our friend John over at The WordPress Expert has been doing a great job keeping us updated on the latest features in the WordPress 2.6 branch.

A couple newly discovered WordPress 2.6 features:

• WordPress Auto-Upgrade
• Plugin Auto-Installation
• Theme preview

It is GREAT to see the WordPress auto-upgrade feature being built into the base WordPress install, and the other two are very useful features.  Click over to check out the other new features and descriptions for each.   Great work John!

Here are some great WordPress-related posts I’ve enjoyed over the past week:

• Track WordPress 2.6 Progress - Quick Online Tips gives some suggestions on how to keep up with the progress of WordPress 2.6.
• How to Create a Dynamic Sidebar - This is something we’ve covered on a couple different occasions here on this site, but I wanted to point out this post because I think Richard does a great job of explaining how to tell WordPress what to display on each page.
• Project M Finally Announced - Justin Tadlock finally announced the details of his Project M. It appears it is a theme club of sorts, but with a twist. Click over to get the details.
• Do It Yourself WordPress Theme - Hayes Potter has come up with an interesting idea by releasing a WordPress theme. Simply build your stylesheet and you are done.
• WordPress Tricks - Stylized Web offers some useful PHP code snippets for WordPress.
• Making Authors Template Page - Also from Justin Tadlock, this post does a great job detailing how to make a WordPress authors template page.
• Displaying Related Categories and Content in WordPress - Darren Hoyt shares the code he used to make this feature in his popular Mimbo Pro theme.