I am very proud to announce the immediate availability of the much-anticipated 1.2 “Mingus” release of WordPress. You can download it through the usual methods, though it usually takes a few hours for the SourceForge mirrors to catch up with everything. There are so many new features it’s almost too much for this post, but I’ll squeeze them in. You can view the full changelog on the wiki.
- Sub-categories: Categories can be arranged hierarchically and infinitely deep. Multiple categories combined with sub-categories gives WordPress the most comprehensive taxonomy system of any blogging software available.
- OPML Export and Import: You can import and export OPML to systems like Bloglines or desktop aggregators like NetNewsWire and FeedDemon.
- Automatic Thumbnail Creation System: WordPress has a refined upload feature that automatically creates thumbnails any size you want.
- Encrypted passwords and cookies: All passwords in the database and password cookies are encrypted, ensuring maximal security.
- New plugin architecture: The new plugin architecture simplifies modifying or extending WordPress’ features. Plugins can now hook into nearly every action WordPress does.
- Localization of WordPress and Unicode support: The efforts put into internationalizing WordPress have borne fruit, and now you can adapt WordPRess to work in your native language. Several translations are already available.
- Advanced comment moderation: You can now fine-tune your moderation filters in a manner very similar to blacklists for other weblog tools. There is also mass-editing of comments, which makes it a snap to delete hundreds of comments with the click of a button, if necessary.
- Post preview: Near-instant previews while writing or editing articles help you proofread and make improvements before finally presenting your work of art to the world.
- RSS and LiveJournal Importers: The new RSS import script is the closest thing to an universal importer. It allows you to import entries from Radio weblogs even other blogging tools that we may not support specifically. The LiveJournal importer finally lets you have a full blooded self-hosted weblog without losing all your old LiveJournal posts.
- Unlimited update services: Now you can define multiple weblog change monitoring services to be pinged when you post.
- Directory flexbility: Now you can have all the WordPress files in one directory and the weblog in a higher level directory.
There is so much more. I hope you all enjoy this release as much as we enjoyed making it for you. Cheers!