Just 7 days after the release of security update 2.0.7, the WordPress.org Community announces the release of the much anticipated 2.1 “Ella” edition named for jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald. I have been using WordPress since 1.5 and I’ve found each update to be better than the last. I am particularly interested in this “major upgrade” and the ability to toggle between the WYSIWYG and code editors instantly. According to WordPress some of the other new features of 2.1 include: 

• 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.

It looks lke an update that will prove very popular.  Read all about it at the WordPress.org website.  Complete instructions to upgrade are available here. The process may be a little tricky according to WordPress, so I suggest that upgrading a test site first might be prudent.

In case you’re interested, WordPress has announced that the next version will be on April 23.