WordPress 2.9 arrives, with an image editor and a trash folder

Good news for users of the popular WordPress blogging platform: WordPress 2.9 has arrived, and it includes some major new features that make blogging easier, as well as hundreds of under-the-hood improvements to important stuff like databases and SEO. The most visible new features are a built-in image editor, a much easier way to embed video, a better plug-in updater, and a trash for your deleted posts and files.

The image editor allows you to resize, crop, flip or rotate your images from within WordPress, which makes fitting your image into a post a whole lot easier. Sometimes it's just not worth opening Photoshop for those quick adjustments. On the video front, you can now paste a URL from any of several major video sites (including YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr and Google Video) and WordPress will recognize and embed the video automatically.

The new plug-in updater does batch updates, so you can install the latest version of up to 10 plug-ins at once. Previously, you had to click each one individually, which was tedious for people with lots of gadgets installed. The new updater also automatically checks to make sure a plug-in is compatible with your WordPress install, so you don't have to fear something mysteriously breaking when you do an update.

Trash seems like something WordPress should have included a long time ago. Now instead of asking whether you really want to delete that post or file, WordPress will just move it to the new trash, where it can be recovered if you change your mind. It's a simple feature, but I think it will avert a lot of data loss catastrophes and save a lot of hassle.

All in all, WordPress 2.9 looks like a major improvement, and it should make your blogging life easier and more productive.

Tags: automattic, blogging, cms, image editor, ImageEditor, wordpress, wordpress 2.9, Wordpress2.9