The latest WordPress 2.0.5 has just been released and it is available for download right now from the Wordpress.org download section or by clicking here.

Mark Jaquith had recently listed the latest changes that were coming in this new version. The majority of the changes are mostly to do with fixing security bugs and issues and the administration side of managing your blog. Now that Wordpress 2.0.5 has finally been officially released, I can now share with you the more important changes that I have found.

Here is a quick list some of the improvements in Wordpress 2.0.5;

• WordPress Database Backup plugin - security has been improved.
• Plugins are now sorted by Plugin name, not filename.
• The authors dropdown in the main options section is now sorted by display name.
• User descriptions will now support HTML tags…

A complete list of changed files since the last 2.0.4 release has been compiled by Mark Jaquith and is available here. Mark has also made a changed files only zip download for people that wish to just upgrade their blogs to the new version. This can really save people a lot of FTP uploading time if you have several blogs to update at one time!

This new version features mostly small improvements designed to make your blog that bit easier to manage. Wordpress 2.0.5 is just another step closer to the long awaited Wordpress 2.1 version which promises to be really great!

Wordpress 2.0.5 Download

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Tech-o-Crunch is a new three column theme for Wordpress and is a very clean looking and Zen-like look and feel. The theme is designed by Omer Cakarca. It features nice, easy on the eye, text fonts and large headings for easy readability. An entire column is dedicated to Adsense ads by default, however this is optionable if so required.

Tech-o-Crunch is widget-ready for easy sidebar customization and also included in the download is the PSD file (PhotoShop) for easy editing of the graphic and logo on the header.

Overall, the Tech-o-Crunch theme is very modern looking, has a great Zen-like feel and also looks very Web 2.0. Definitely a theme for today’s blogger.

• Theme - Tech-o-Crunch
• Author - Omer Cakarca
• Version - 0.1
• Release Date - 17 Oct 2006
• Download - Tech-o-Crunch.zip

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WPThemes.info has released a lovely new Wordpress theme called GreenFlower. The creator Sadish has done it again by producing an excellent theme with many cool features built into it.

Some of the built-in features include a Theme Options page and several Page Templates which are great for setting up quick pages to your blog. As always with Sadish’s themes it is Sidebar Widget ready for easy customization of the sidebar.

Here is a complete list of features included in the GreenFlower theme;

• Support for Asides
• Sidebar Widget Ready
• Theme Options Page
• Archives Page Template
• Contact Page Template
• Automatic Page Navigation
• Sub Pages
• Author Page
• 404 Not Found Page
• Category Page
• Date-wise Archives Page
• Search Page

For more infomation and to download this great theme visit the GreenFlower page at WPThemes.info.

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Google has recently announced that the Google Blog Search Pinging Service is now accepting pings from blogs. So, if you want to ensure your latest posts appear in Google’s Blog Search you will want to ping them everytime you make a new post.

There are two ways you can do this.

Manual Ping

The manual method of pinging Google is to simply go to http://blogsearch.google.com/ping and enter your blogs URL everytime your blog is updated. This is the straight forward method but many will prefer the Automatic Ping method listed below.

Automatic Ping

If you want Wordpress to automatically ping Google everytime you update your blog, then you will need to add http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2 to your Update Services box in your Wordpress admin area. This is found in the options/writing section of the admin area and by default Pingomatic (http://rpc.pingomatic.com) will already be in the text box.

While Pingomatic already pings a number of services for you, by adding Google’s ping url to the Update Services list you are sure to increase your blogs exposure on the net. For more information on ping lists and a comprehensive list of update services see the Wordpress Compressed All Inclusive Ping List.

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A beautiful new 3 column Wordpress theme called Subtle has been released and it has a lot of inbuilt features. It was designed for blogs that have multiple authors, with each author having their own archive and information page. However, it will work well on just about any blog. The header and footer are great and overall this theme is really professional looking.

The theme features Fam Fam Fam’s excellent Silk Icons set to great effect. Also, there is built-in FeedBurner support and the theme fully supports WordPress Widgets which makes customization very easy. This theme is built by Glued Ideas and it is one of the better Wordpress templates out there at the moment. For a complete list of features check out here.

Demo: Here

Download: Here

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Michael K. Bergman of AI³ has just released a plugin that extends the default TinyMCE rich text editor in Wordpress 2.0+. This plugin will give you a full WYSIWYG editor for your Blog! Michael details his journey in putting together this plugin on his recent blog post, Extending TinyMCE, the WordPress Rich Text Editor.

In older versions of WordPress (1.5) the only text formatting available was by using QuickTags to format text. However, since Wordpress 2.0 was released the developers have now incorporated the proven Javascript Rich Text editor, TinyMCE as part of all new versions (2.0+). However, the rich text editor adopted by Wordpress is configured more like the previous QuickTags feature set and only has a few available editing functions such as bold, bullets, text alignment, etc. Here is a screenshot showing the default editor in your WordPress admin area;

Now, here is a screenshot showing the new WYSIWYG editor when the Extended TinyMCE plugin is installed and activated;

As you can see, this new editor has a LOT more options and can be considered a full WYSIWYG editor for Wordpress. Here are just a few of the new features that are available;

• Table creation
• Cut/copy/paste
• Headings, H1, H2 etc
• Text Color & Highlighting
• Clean Up HTML button & lots more.

This plugin is a great addition to your Wordpress installation and these extra features are sure to be useful. It is also easy to remove unwanted buttons by simply editing the advanced-wysiwyg.php plugin file using the Plugin Editor in your Wordpress installation.

To download this plugin visit Mike Bergman’s site here.

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