WordPress 2.1 Released

WordPress released another update on January 22, 2007 - called Ella (after Ella Fitzgerald) - that promotes the blogging software up to the 2.1 level. The update includes a number of new feature introductions like auto save, increased use of AJAX and a spell checking function for the visual editor.

According to the WordPress blog, Ella also fixes over 550 bugs, something that’s sure to please enterprising SEO blog hackers. Another area of interest concerning the Ella update has to do with the introduction of a search engine privacy feature. This will allow WP bloggers to determine whether or not they want their work to be pinged to or indexed by the search industry.

Because blog comment spam is a constant worry, any news concerning the Akismet plugin - the favorite WordPress comment spam tool - will be of major interest, Akismet has also been updated and is bundled in with WordPress 2.1 Ella. According to the Akismet blog, some of these changes include:

• Users can now search the Akismet caught queue
• A new counter widget showing a live count of your spam
• Discard spam that comes in on posts older than a month

Download WordPress 2.1