Don’t you love when you get the following message on your WordPress dashboard:
WordPress 2.8 is available! Please update now.
You click on update and off it goes. One click automatic upgrade from 2.7 to 2.8 without having to do anything else.
My WordPress 2.8 video review
I just upgraded my blog to WordPress 2.8 today. Not as major upgrade as WordPress 2.7 but WordPress 2.8 has couple of huge changes in Appereance menu. These changes will make it much easier for bloggers to find, install and change themes on their blogs without having to use FTP and without uploading files onto the server.
Thesis theme also released an upgrade immediately so it now supports WordPress 2.8 as well. For Thesis users, please upgrade Thesis to the new version Thesis 1.5.1 before you upgrade WordPress.
This is a video review of me playing around with WordPress 2.8.
Huge changes in the Appearance menu
- Appearance – Add New Themes
You can now search for different WordPress themes directly via the interface. Not only that, you can preview how the themes would look on your blog and you can install and activate the theme via the interface as well.
In WordPress 2.7 this happened to plugins, now the themes as well. You no longer need to use FTP to upload your theme files, you can download the theme, install it, and activate it directly from the WordPress interface. Amazing!
- Appearance – Widgets
New Widgets interface. Very Apple like in terms of the usability. Just drag and drop widgets into your sidebar. Very quick, very simple… you do not even have to save the Sidebars anymore. As soon as you drag a Widget to the sidebar it shows on your blog. Amazing!
Change columns in your screen layout
When choosing the screen option of your WordPress interface you can now choose the number of columns (between 1-4). A little improvement that can make your interface much smaller, easier to use and can improve your productivity.
One-click WordPress upgrade
See a video of me demonstrating how easy it is to upgrade a WordPress blog:
Install WordPress 2.8 now
I hope this quick review helps you decide to upgrade to WordPress 2.8 immediately. If you are on a different platform, this upgrade makes WordPress stand out even more. It is by far the most professional and the most customizable blogging platform and it will definitely help your blog reach a higher level. Here is a guide on how to install WordPress 2.8 on your own server.
Join thousands of bloggers and get all my blogging tips for FREE! Subscribe to HowToMakeMyBlog via RSS or via e-mail.
If you liked this article, you may also like:
Why I run my blog on Thesis Wordpress Theme
Thesis theme gives my blog a professional, clean, easy-to-read layout and SEO friendly design. Thesis makes it simple to make your own blog unique. See more details and get your own Thesis today.
{ 35 comments }
Cool review Marko, I love how you made a video to show how to upgrade. Don’t see that often!
I have updated one of my blogs that is less heavily customized to Thesis 1.5.1 and WordPress 2.8. A little nervous to update my more customized blog, but I will do it soon.
But I totally love the 3 column Dashboard view. I have been wanting that for a while too.
are all my plugins still gonna work?
@kari – I use several plugins and didn’t have any problems at all.
I upgraded all of my blogs without any issues.
@Kari If you have a problem with your blog deactivate all of your plugins and test one by one to see what one caused your blog to have the problem. If you find a plugin to be the problem see if the plugin has a updated version. Greg Ellison
Thanks for going over some of the new features for us, Marko! I’m like Alex, a little wary of updating my blog just yet. I’m waiting until I check all my plugins and my theme for compatibility. I know, so far, I will need to update my WP Theme before the update.
Good videos. Upgrade tool about 10 seconds, just one click. Not to many very useful new features, but the hundreds of bugs they fixed is nice. Admin area load times seem to be a bit smoother.
Great video Marko. Thanks.
I am still on Blogger and actively considering WordPress and Thesis. My biggest gripe is that there is no way for me to study the Thesis theme from the inside i.e. how to configure the look and feel.
As an on-going PR5 blog, with daily content, I need to have a quick and seamless transition, and this fear has kept me away from both WP and Thesis.
To even enter the support forum, DIYthemes team wants me to purchase Thesis without an option for refund. Power users like yourself and others who promote Thesis should bring this point up to the DIY folks for their consideration.
It is also a subject you, as an owner, and promoter of Thesis, can consider making an extended video about.
Thanks for all the comments!
@Devesh Agarwal – I bought it without trying it as well. Didn’t have any problems to switch at all. See my video review of Thesis interface.
Marko, Great Review!
We have prepared a list of resources for developers who need to upgrade their themes/plugins for 2.8. Here is the link: http://bit.ly/18dvIF
Hi Marko!
If you upgrade to Thesis 1.5.1 from Thesis 1.5 would your current style settings be disrupted?
Caleb
Thanks for comments!
@Caleb Galaraga – Not really. One step in the Thesis upgrade process is to move your “custom” folder from Thesis 1.5 into your new Thesis 1.5.1. All your style settings are in that folder so that keeps all your setting the same in the new version as well. On the Thesis download page you have all the steps.
Good job Marko. Again showing why I can never compete with you… but maybe I’ll just have to market stuff to people who haven’t heard of you
That will be difficult since I just Tweeted this post.
All the best.
What if I already updated to WP 2.8 but didn’t upgrade my Thesis first as noted in the post?
@Emily – You must upgrade Thesis anyway, before or after, if you want all new features of WordPress to work correctly.
@Marko understood, but it won’t jack anything up if I do it in reverse order as you suggested?
“For Thesis users, please upgrade Thesis to the new version Thesis 1.5.1 before you upgrade WordPress.”
@Emily – It won’t. I just wrote it that way as several new functions of WordPress will not work without the new Thesis.
What a great video. I JUST figured out the ftp and hosting etc so I won’t really need the theme part but it looks like it’ll help a lot for those who do’t feel like messing with all of that stuff.
@Marko Great, thanks! Love the blog!
Thanks, as always, Marko. How do you shorten the length of the excerpts on your homepage? They seem shorter than the “teasers” in Thesis. Can you use the open hook plugin for this?
Carol
@Carol – Put this in your custom functions file (change 30 to whatever number of characters you wish):
add_filter('excerpt_length', 'my_excerpt_length');function my_excerpt_length($length) {
return 30; }
Thanks – you rock!
Thanks Marko – I was just wondering whether to upgrade or not a blog I am still working on for the customisation, and found this useful.
LOL – haven’t finished yet the customisation and before going live already an upgrade for the blogging platform…
Out of curiosity, what software/tool do you use to shot that sort of videos?
Thanks
@Vito Botta – Thanks! I use ScreenFlow (on a Mac).
Cool, thanks
Just quick questions.
1)
Updated to thesis 1.5.1 before updating to wp 2.8.
Not all my 1.5 widgets went over. I presume you have to re install them or put them in the custom file:-)
2)
Do you or do you not need all in one wp seo package plugin with thesis (anymore)?
3)
Had installed the redirection plugin before. Had to take it away as it proceeded and endless loop in 1.5 with 2.7 . Any experience?
Cheers!
@Happy Hotelier – Didn’t have any problems with my widgets, try to place them again. If you use All In One SEO for meta title, meta description, meta keywords of your articles, then you can just use the inbuilt feature in Thesis. It does the same thing.
I use .htaccess file on my server to redirect. For example see this line of code inside my .htaccess that I use to redirect my http://howtomakemyblog.com/twitter-ebook/ page to another URL:
Redirect 301 /twitter-ebook/ http://www.howtomakemyblog.com/ebook/whats-the-twitter-marketing-e-book/I’ll fudz further
As to the widgets….the text widgets (referrals to Mybloglog and so on) I had installed in my 1,5 (approx 18 of them) didn’t show up once I had installed 1.5.1.
I still have a copy of the 1.5 installation. Do you know which file is affected when you install or de install widgets? So that I can look there to copy and past the various scripts?
In order to know about faulty landings I have installed the 404 notifier plugin of Alex King which produces an excellent overview of faulty requests also from search bots, so you can weed out some problems but I don’t understand every faulty request … I was hoping the redirection plugin took me a bit further:-)
In the redirection plugin description It sez it gives good text to rewrite your .htaccess file….
@Happy Hotelier – Not sure really, never really had any issues with widgets. WordPress forums or Thesis forums might have something about it.
Redirection plugin is definitively a no go….creates a loop without end….blog has to wait for a while. Aanother problem asks for attention: Replacing a Novell server…yes I’m an old (fashioned) hacker:-)
WOW.. I just used the theme uploader where you get to go and find new themes other than the same old one’s you get if you are a .wordpress.com person… and it was so so easy.. I just love Wordpress! and this blog! Thanks again.
This new process of installing themes is great. make it much easier to be able to take care of this right through the dashboard.
This whole blogging malarkey is new to me, so I really, really appreciate it when someone gives great advice and easy to follow guides and tips! Thanks Marko, you're brilliant!
That is fair enough comment, I am using it on one of my blogs and am enjoying it. One thing though is that some plugins here and there that I use and love using make some things in Wordpress 2.8 go ‘crazy’ and I can’t find any alternatives. I guess it is just a matter of waiting for the developers to update their plugins so that they are compatible with 2.8.
Mark – I notice that you have embedded video in this post. I am having trouble with that. I can add a link to a video, but when I try to embed the video nothing happens. Can you point me to directions on how to do this? It actually seemed like it should be straightforward – I copied the embed video code from youtube, pasted into the embed video spot on my post page . . .and nothing. Thanks
You just need to paste the embed code directly into the text field where you are writing your blog post in the HTML editor part. You do not need to use any “embed video spots”.