The WordPress development team has a new schedule for releases- one major version every 3 months is the goal. Today, WordPress 2.3 is supposed to be realeased and there is a very good post at Technosailor about the 10 things you need to know.

I’m most excited about Plugin version notifications. If there has been one bane to our developers existence, it’s been broken WP updates- because a plugin isn’t updated- causing us to go through the trial and error check. Now WP will let us know when plugins are updated- solving this very real problem. The Tagging function is cool- but this is useful.

10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.3
Update Notifications

Update notifications have been a long requested feature of WordPress and thankfully in this release, it’s been delivered – not once, but twice. Now WordPress can alert you when a new version of WordPress is available as well as new plugin versions.

There are 9 other cool things he talks about- and we’ll have some info on 2.3 as well- once the final release is out. We’ve updated all of our WP installs on our server to use Fantastico for updates- so as soon as it hit’s fantastico’s server- we’ll be able to update with one click.

If there is one thing that seems overly complex to new WP users it’s FTP. I’m not quite sure why, maybe it’s the overly complex/techie look of most FTP programs (we like Transmit for the Mac- very sexy and sweet)- or recommend the FireFTP plugin for Firefox.

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol- and it’s a fancy way of saying- copy files from your computer to a Web server. Not so hard. But, when it comes to loading a new plugin or theme for WordPress you used to have to go through all these steps:

Backup your Database

Once you’ve found a plugin or theme in your browser (preferably Firefox)- download it to your computer

1. Unstuff it on your computer
2. Open an FTP program and connect to your site
3. Navigate to the WP-Content folder
4. Browse your computer to find the file you’ve downloaded
5. Upload it to the WP-Content folder
6. Open your WordPress admin, go to Plugins or Presentation and activate the new addition.

Along comes Anirudh, and he writes this one click plugin- and all that goes away!

OneClick for WordPress | Thought Outflux | Anirudh Sanjeev
OneClick is a WordPress Plugin Firefox Extension combo which will change the way you look at wordpress forever. It reduces the effort needed to install a plugin or a theme for wordpress to just one simple click. It’s excellent for admins, non-techies, people with restrictive firewalls, and just about anyone who uses wordpress and installs plugins and themes.

Not only does this WordPress tool backup your files, providing role-back if your new plugin may bork your WP install, it has auto update notification (if he releases updates to it- a norm for Firefox installs- but not for WordPress, yet) so you will never be using the old version.

The one caveat is that it may be harder to delete some of your new themes or plugins- unless you go through his provided file nuke protocol.

We probably will stick to using our FTP process (we bill by the minute 🙂 – but for many of you, this may be another key to making WP the easiest system on the planet for publishing on the web.

If you do like his plugin- please go to the plugin rating contest and give him a thumbs up!

WordPress isn’t just for blogs- in fact, the word blog needs to die. WordPress builds a website- actively served, using a sophisticated Content Management System that is easy to use. It’s so easy- that smart companies are starting to use it to manage content and keep their site up-to-date, and W3C compliant for a lot less money.

Here are some of the sites we’ve found using WordPress as a back end. To verify- you just type /wp-admin after the url.

• http://www.xxlmag.com/ home isn’t WP, but it all leads to interior pages managed by WP.
  
• http://autoshows.ford.com/
• http://wildscotsman.com/whisky/ must be of age to view
• http://redblock.com.au/
• http://whoisjengordon.com/
• http://agenturblog.de/
• http://www.deliciousdays.com/
• http://allthingsd.com/
• http://www.2checkout.com/
• http://www.houseofnaked.com/ (it’s an ad agency- don’t worry)

Some, more than others look like a more conventional site. The point is, data from a database can be formatted anyway you want. The key is understanding the real beauty of a WordPress site is that everything offers the ability to build community.