The WordPress Podcast

As many of you are already away, the developers released RC1 (release candidate #1) shortly after Jonathan and I recorded episode 38. A release candidate is more than a beta version, but less than the final, full release version. Technically, it’s considered unreleased software and should be installed with caution only by those who understand it may be buggy, but I’ve seen it and it seems fairly stable to me. I’m even planning on installing it myself on all of my blogs.

Aaron Brazell, as he is wont to do when a new release of WordPress approaches, has posted 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.5 that covers the new admin user interface, the drastically updated menu layout and dashboard overhaul, the new Flash uploader, improved tag and timestamp management, the ability to upgrade the core and plugins, improved widget handling, custom thumbnail sizes, password strength alerts and improvements in TinyMCE and the WYSIWYG editor. Aaron’s blog is always a must-read for WordPress users, but this week doubly so.

Things are going to look terrible for a while until I fix all of the validation and feed problems… sorry!

Update: Okay, everything validates as XHTML again and the iTunes listing is current once again. Things are pretty much back to normal. Thanks, everybody, for your patience.

For some as-yet-unknown reason, the podcast is down, at least to those attempting to play or download the episode using the podPress plugin. I’m working on the problem, and I hope to have things back up and working soon.

Update: Everything seems to be okay again. Apparently, podPress 8.2 breaks when statistics logging is turned on.