It’s official, it’s on time- and it may confuse a lot of people.

It’s WordPress 2.1 and we’ve already launched one site using the new “static front page” system. Although this was possible with some hacks- it’s now an official feature- and a sort of nod back to a Web 1.5 world. The idea of a “static” front page is based on the idea that people will actually come to your URL based on something other than search- and are too stupid to look around a bit.

80% of your hits will come from search- and 40% of the people who know your URL will still type it into a search bar- so, the likelihood of them actually seeing your front page is very low.

Before you jump into the 2.1 world, make sure you do a complete backup of your site, theme and database- it does some things very different than 2.0. Some plugins will break- research each one that you consider key before taking the plunge. And even thought the developers are now announcing the next version will be released on April 23rd- be aware, the 2.0 codebase will be maintained until 2010.

The biggest changes (besides the static front page option) are the built in spell check, the new image handling tools (which have been seen on WordPress.com for quite a while), and the easy ability to switch between code and WYSIWG in the edit window.

How the new page configuration will work with RSS- and Google visibility will have to be looked at. For now, we’re moving slowly at switching sites over. We will have more info as time goes by. Here are the official users side changes from the DevBlog:
Development Blog › WordPress 2.1 Ella

• Autosave makes sure you never lose a post again.
• Our new tabbed editor allows you to switch between WYSIWYG and code editing instantly while writing a post.
• The lossless XML import and export makes it easy for you to move your content between WordPress blogs.
• Our completely redone visual editor also now includes spell checking.
• New search engine privacy option allows you take you to indicate your blog shouldn’t ping or be indexed by search engines like Google.
• You can set any “page” to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.
• Much more efficient database code, faster than previous versions. Domas Mituzas from MySQL went over all our queries with a fine-toothed comb.
• Links in your blogroll now support sub-categories and you can add categories on the fly.
• Redesigned login screen from the Shuttle project.
• More AJAX to make custom fields, moderation, deletions, and more all faster. My favorite is the comments page, which new lets you approve or unapprove things instantly.
• Pages can now be drafts, or private.
• Our admin has been refreshed to load faster and be more visually consistent.
• The dashboard now instantly and brings RSS feeds asynchronously in the background.
• Comment feeds now include all the comments, not just the last 10.
• Better internationalization and support for right-to-left languages.
• The upload manager lets you easily manage all your uploads pictures, video, and audio.
• A new version of the Akismet plugin is bundled.

Feel free to share your 2.1 experiences in the comments on this post.

WordPress released 2.0.6 yesterday- and it’s supposedly the last release before the much awaited 2.1

Apple users should be happy that Safari will now display quicktags- but, as always, Firefox is the browser of choice for WordPress users (and with Firefox 2.0 you get spell check!).

Development Blog › WordPress 2.0.6

Here’s what’s new:* The aforementioned security fixes.
* HTML quicktags now work in Safari browsers.
* Comments are filtered to prevent them from messing up your blog layout.
* Compatibility with PHP/FastCGI setups.

If you’d like Websitetology to upgrade your WordPress installation to 2.0.6. complete with back-up, and a review of your active plug-ins for latest versions, jump over to this link: http://blogosopher.com/?page_id=7

When we install WordPress for clients, we often include a nice selection of themes and some essential plugins. However, many people want to change the look of their site- by uploading new themes- or add new functionality to WordPress using Plugins. Here is how you update your WordPress install using FireFTP a free plug-in FTP for Firefox.

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and the FireFTP extension for Firefox is a free, open source solution- other programs that do the same thing on a Mac are Fetch and Transmit. On a PC, you can get SmartFTP or FTP Explorer. FireFTP will do everything you need- and it’s free.
First you have to have Firefox installed- go to www.getfirefox.com to download a copy (if you haven’t already). Install Firefox- and don’t worry, it can reside peacefully next to Internet Explorer or Safari- you can have multiple browsers on your machine. It’s our opinion that you should make it your primary browser- and import all settings from your current default browser- but that is up to you.

Once in Firefox- go to TOOLS>ADD ONS

This will take you to the page where all the extensions are listed. Find the Search box- and type in FIREFTP- it should take you to this page: https://addons.mozilla.org/search.php?q=Fireftp&type=E&app=firefox

Click on FIREFTP, and then the “Install now” button. Restart Firefox and you should now have a little seahorse in your tool bar- and “FireFTP” as an option in your TOOLS menu.

The icons: back, forward (dimmed), refresh, stop, FireFTP (the blue seahorse), Sage, autofill, new tab.

Now that you have FireFTP installed- you have to set it up for accessing your WordPress installation.

These are instructions for our server– using a standard Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP) running Cpanel.

First- click on the “Manage Accounts” text on the left side- create new account.

Main Tab: 

Account Name: What ever you want to call your site.

Host: url.tld (example: websitetology.com)

Login: your site login, will be different than your WordPress login

Password: your site login, may be different than your WordPress login

Connection type tab: 

Check “Passive mode”

Initial directories:

Local: a folder on your computer where you will keep your WordPress files.

Remote: www

Advanced tab:

No need to enter anything in these- although you can decide on how you want your file names to be structured- either Leave Case Alone, convert to lower case, or  CONVERT TO UPPER CASE (note- all files must not have spaces in them.)

Clicking on connect should open the connection- with your local folder on the left- and your www folder on the server on the right.

There will be a long list of files on the server- with a lot of them starting with WP – this is your WordPress install- the only, ONLY, folder you will move things in and out of is your wp-content folder.

Inside it you will find three folders,  Uploads, themes and plugins.

These are where you place your content- respectively.

Uploads is where the WordPress upload tool will place your files- using a year, month, date file hierarchy. Sometimes you may go in here to update a file, or check a link structure. Most of you will never have to access this folder.

The Themes folder is where you will copy the entire folder of a theme that you have downloaded to your computer from someplace like the WordPress Theme Viewer. To upload the file from your computer to the server- have the closed folder that contains your theme on the left, and the themes folder open on the right- select the theme on the left- and click the right arrow button in the center-FireFTP will begin the upload process.

To upload- select the file on left- Pool, click right arrow and it will move from your computer to the server.

Once the files are done the FTP process- you log into your WordPress admin panel- the Desktop, click on the presentation tab- and activate your new theme.

To upload Plugins- you do the same thing- only upload them into your Plugin folder.

If you have any questions- or run into problems with these instructions- please comment below- and I will update or clarify the instructions.