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I’m Blogging this from WordPress 2.7 and its fantastic! I was one of the 1st 1000 users who upgraded to WordPress 2.7 and I’m so glad about it! 😀 The first thing you’ll notice about 2.7 is its new interface. From the top down, we’ve listened to our feedback and thought deeply about the design and the result is a WordPress that’s just plain faster. Nearly every task you do on your blog will take fewer clicks and be faster in 2.7 than it did in a previous version. (Download it now or Mirror, or read on for more.)

Next you’ll begin to notice the new features subtly sprinkled through the new interface: the new dashboard that you can arrange with drag and drop to put the things most important to you on top, QuickPress, comment threading, paging, and the ability to reply to comments from your dashboard, the ability to install any plugin directly from WordPress.org with a single click, and sticky posts.

Digging in further you might notice that every screen is customizable. Let’s say you never care about author on your post listings — just click “Screen Options” and uncheck it and it’s instantly gone from the page. The same for any module on the dashboard or write screen. If your screen is narrow and the menu is taking up too much horizontal room, click the arrow to minimize it to be icon-only, and then go to the write page and drag and drop everything from the right column into the main one, so your posting area is full-screen. (For example I like hiding everything except categories, tags, and publish. I put categories and tags on the right, and publish under the post box.)

For a visual introduction to what 2.7 is, check out this video (available in HD, and full screen):

Sources: WordPress Blog

P.S – This is my 100th post and I’m so glad I made it with WP 2.7! 😀

WordPress 2.6.5 is immediately available and fixes one security problem and three bugs. I recommend everyone upgrade to this release.

The security issue is an XSS exploit discovered by Jeremias Reith that fortunately only affects IP-based virtual servers running on Apache 2.x. If you are interested only in the security fix, copy wp-includes/feed.php and wp-includes/version.php from the 2.6.5 release package.

2.6.5 contains three other small fixes in addition to the XSS fix. The first prevents accidentally saving post meta information to a revision. The second prevents XML-RPC from fetching incorrect post types. The third adds some user ID sanitization during bulk delete requests. For a list of changed files, consult the full changeset between 2.6.3 and 2.6.5.

Note that WordPress is skipping version 2.6.4 and jumping from 2.6.3 to 2.6.5 to avoid confusion with a fake 2.6.4 release that made the rounds. There is not and never will be a version 2.6.4.

So guys, upgrade now and avoid being ‘hacked’ and losing all your hardwork. To inform the world about this security update – Digg and Stumble this article! Download 2.6.5 from the OFFICIAL SITE AND NO WHERE ELSE!

Get WordPress 2.6.5

I don’t know about others, but according to me.. these are the TOP 10 WordPress Plugins that a blogger needs 🙂

1) Akismet
To stop the daily increasing spam and to keep your blog neat and clean. A spam blocker is needed and Akismet is a perfect plugin to stop spam and non relevant comments on your blog 🙂

2) Sociable
To allow your readers bookmark their favorite social bookmarking site! This also helps you get huge back links 😉

3) WP Super Cache
Have alot of readers and not enough server resources? Or are you on a shared web hosting and your host does not allow you to host big sites.. This plugin will help you decrease the server load by almost 50-60%!

4) Yet Another Related Post Plugin
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site

5) Register Plus
Enhance your Registration Page. Allow users to set their password, setup invite code and track sign ups.

6) Top Commentators Widget
Just like a blogroll.. allow your visitors add a backlink in your Top Comments Widget by commenting on your blog! What do they get? They get a backlink to their site on every page as long as they are top commentators of your blog 😉

7) CommentLuv
Pass a bit of luv onto your commenters by providing a titled link to their last blog post. This plugin attempts to parse the feed of the comment author by visiting their site and looking for their feed while they type their comment and appends it once they submit.

8) Recent Comments
This plugin shows excerpts of the latest comments and/or trackbacks in your sidebar. The benefit about this plugin is that it allows your regular commentors get backlinks on Search Engines 😉

9) Subscribe Remind
With the Subscribe-Remind plugin, some text will automatically be placed at the end of each of your posts inviting your readers to subscribe to your RSS feed.

10) Comment Approval Notification
The Comment Approval Notification plugin will send an email to the comment author when you approve their comment.

This was according to me, but I’m sure there might be way more plugins to increase your readers and make your blog better 🙂

Thank you for reading at Sensonize.com and do Subscribe to my feeds via email! 😀

It seems there has been an attempt recently to distribute a trojaned version of WordPress via some form of phishing scam.  It seems this attack relied on exploiting an old version of WordPress which had not been upgraded and changing it to point at a different site for one of the dashboard feeds.  The site was then offering a trojaned install of a version of WordPress 2.6.4 which does not exist.  The site has now been shutdown so it is nolonger possible to get hold of this Trojaned version but it does hilight the importance of upgrading when a security release is made.

As I have said in my response in the article on The Register

We recommend that people upgrade as soon as possible when we release a security release so as to ensure they are not vulnerable to issues which will likely have exploits in the wild. Also in the upcoming 2.7 release of WordPress we are including a built-in upgrade mechanism within WordPress which will allow people to upgrade automatically with ease.

I would however stress the need with any piece of software to check that an upgrade is real by visiting the website of the software provider manually rather than relying on a link that you have been provided. Otherwise, as with bank phishing scams there is the potential for someone to trick you into doing something you didn’t want to do.

Source: Westi