There’s a new version of WordPress out – 2.5.1 – and it is sweet. The biggest change is in the admin interface… it’s been redesigned to be more user-friendly and visually appealing. It’s been rearranged, but it’s easy to get used to the new layout. My other favorite new feature is one-click plugin upgrades, which means when a new version of one of your plugins comes out, you just click the upgrade link and away you go. No muss, no fuss downloading, unzipping and uploading. Just one click!! And of course, with this type of thing you always want to be sure you have a good backup before you start upgrading either WordPress or your plugins.

The tagging feature in WordPress is really nice, too. It allows you to be more precisely classify your posts, kind of like subcategories or keywords. Once you get some tags going, you can put a “tag cloud” in your sidebar and people can browse your blog entries by clicking on the tags.

One problem I had after upgrading was uploading images, and I found out it’s a problem with Flash (since I’m running Linux, I may not have the latest and greatest). So, as usual, a plugin saved the day. I found a forum thread about the problem and the solution was down at the bottom: a plugin to disable the Flash uploader. After installing the plugin, I’m able to upload and manage files just fine.

This upgrade is definitely recommended. Your need at least PHP version 4.3 and MySQL version 4.0… any modern web host should meet or exceed those requirements. If your host doesn’t have these things, you need to think about changing web hosting. Here’s a host we like. If you need any help getting upgraded, please let us know – we’re happy to assist!