WordPress version 2.9 is out of beta and now available to all.  I took the time to read the developer’s notes, and discovered some cool new tricks you can do with this amazing FREE platform, that you couldn’t do in 2.8.6:

Fish things out of the trash

WordPress now features a “trashcan” so now you can bring back that stuff you accidentally deleted, including posts, pages, and comments. Items will stay in there for 30 days unless you permanently delete them.

Edit images in the WordPress image uploader

You can now actually edit images in the image uploader – you can crop (with different aspect ratios), rotate, and flip images. (Click the image below to see it bigger.)

Also, you can make different crops for the actual image and for the thumbnail – which is exceedingly groovy.

Embed videos just by pasting in the URL

From the Codex on version 2.9:

“Media embedding has also undergone a major makeover. Support for the oEmbed standard makes copying and pasting video URLs right into your post super-simple.

Now all you need to do is paste the URL onto a line of its own… Use the new embed shortcode if you don’t want to separate it onto its own line… Or “Add Video From URL” from the visual editor icon. And you’re good to go.

By default you’ll find that there’s support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, & WordPress.tv, with more on the way.”

Update multiple plug-ins with a single click

Ever get tired of having to click 10 times and go through that plug-in upgrade process 10 times? Now you can upgrade all plug-ins that are showing updates available with a single click.

Go “live” with your site without really meaning to

This one’s not necessarily a plus, depending on how you’re used to doing things. Prior to version 2.9, new WordPress installs have always defaulted the Privacy Settings to “block search engines,” which gave you the space to do your thing without getting indexed until you were ready. Now that is the reverse – indexing is the default, so remember to turn that off if you’re used to being a bit incognito while working on your site.

Every day, working on the web becomes easier and more fun! Thanks Matt Mullenweg and crew for the freshness.