If you haven’t heard, Wordpress 2.1 Ella (named after jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald) was released yesterday with updated features and over 500+ bug fixes.

You can download it from [1] here.

It is an easy one touch upgrade. I have tested it out on my test site but I have decided not to upgrade it on my main blog at this time as some of the plugins don’t work with the new version. Since my main blog has version 2.0.7 which is pretty secure/ stable, I’ll wait on the upgrade for now.

Here is what’s new in 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.

I must add that from testing it out, this is the best Wordpress one yet - the developers really listened to all our gripes/ complains and implemented them. Being a big AJAX fan, it’s had me sold before I even used it.

Oh and just a heads up … there are little [2] easter eggs (hidden features) everywhere. I’ll write a post on Wordpress 2.1’s easter eggs (as I know where they are) sometime later so be sure to check back at The Foo Logs. In the mean time, look for it and see how many you can find.