WordPress 1.5 “Strayhorn” was released earlier this week and I have finally gotten around to updating my blog. This was originally going to be version 1.3, but there were so many new features that the devolopers decided it deserved 1.5. On to the new features:

• Themes
  • This is one of the most promising new features. This makes it extremely easy to change your entire site or just a single category.
• Comments
  • One nice feature is one you approve a comment from someone they have the right to post again without having to get your approval again.
• Spam Protection
  • By default all comments are put into moderation waiting for my approval. Once something gets on my blacklist I never have to deal with them again.
  • We all know that spammers use proxies to get around IP blocking and other methods of detection, which is why the devolopers have added code to detect insecure proxies. Very cool.
• Comment Registration
  • There is now the option to make users register to make comments. I won’t be using this, but I am sure this will be used by many of the WordPress users out there.
• Pages
  • There is now the ability to create static pages in WordPress. This means that you can now create an entire site with WordPress. I will be using this feature to recreate all of the pages on my website.
• Dashboard
  • This nice little feature in the admin section is filled with information about your specific blog. It also has the latest headlins from the WordPress community.
• The Backend
  • WordPress 1.5 is smaller in size that 1.2.2 and has fixed hundreds of bugs, amazing.

I haven’t had a lot of time to really dig into 1.5, but so far I am very impressed and highly recommend everyone to give it a try. If you want an indepth explanation of the new features please head on over to the WordPress Devolpment Blog

Hats off to all of the developers on a job very well done. Incase you are curious as to how many people have downloaded WordPress 1.5 head on over the the download counter. 27,105 as of this entry.

I just got done upgrading my site to the latest version of WordPress and as usual it was painless. It was just a matter of removing the old install and uploading the new version, minus the template files that I changed. Then, just running the upgrade and then I was done. There are some great step-by-step instructions in the WordPress Wiki.

Here is a list of the changes from the WordPress site.

• Here’s a few of the things we’ve addressed in this release:
  • Login problems
  • A security fix for a specific IIS/PHP combination
  • Last-modified header bug
  • An issue with the way site moves were handled
  • Email encoding issues

I have been playing the world of warcraft open beta since it started about a week ago. I decided to play as a Gnome Warlock and am currently level 14. I have taken a little over 50 shots so far and they are in the usual place, my gallery.

I have uploaded 75 more screenshots from the Everquest II beta to my gallery. A majority of them are from the last few minutes of the beta. I upped the graphics settings, so it ran like crap on my system, but the shots should look better.

I have added some more links. I have also been doing some work on the gallery. The design part is pretty much done, except for the footer, which is off for some reason. I have not attempted to strip out the tables and make it valid XHTML. I have not decided whether I will spend the time trying or not.