WordPress 2.8 has hit the streets, folks, and there are some serious goodies awaiting you!

WordPress 2.8 Highlights

* Theme Browser and Installer
* Ability to add Custom Headers
* New drag-and-drop widgets admin interface and new Widgets API
* New ways to customize dashboard widgets
* Syntax highlighting and function lookup built into plugin and theme editors.
* Configurable Views on Management Pages.
* Faster Loading Admin Pages

Check out this great review, or the WordPress Codex (documentation).

Plug-ins That I Use that Don’t Like 2.8 (…yet)

When I upgraded to 2.8 and logged back in, my Dashboard was blown away. So, I deactivated all my plugins and checked it and it was fine again. That meant that one (or more) of my plug-ins was the culprit. So, I went through all my plug-ins (and you know I’m a plug-in addict, so it took awhile) and activated them one by one to see which one was blowing it up. Turns out there were more than one. Here’s my list:

Broken Link Checker – I’m going to miss this one for awhile…it’s pretty handy and shows me all the links I have on my site that don’t work. (I don’t knowingly put links on here that don’t work, but sometimes links break when what I’m linking to changes or moves. Like Feedburner…all the links I had on previous posts broke when Feedburner moved to Google, and this handy little plug-in lets me know when that happens.)

Traffic Getting SEO Plugin Free Version – finds the best SEO plugins available for wordpress and then optimizes their settings so you don’t have to. Saves you time and helps get you more traffic. This is a fairly new plugin from Jeff Johnson, so I’m not surprised it blows up with 2.8. I just hope Jeff gets on the stick and gets it playing nice again soon.

WP Ajax Edit Comments – this one I suspect you guys will miss more than I will, because as I can just hop into the dashboard to edit my typos, but hopefully it’ll be fixed soon, too.

WP Auto Tagger – this is a plugin that was recommended by the Traffic Getting plugin, so I haven’t been using it for very long.

XHTML Video Embed – Ok, this one makes my Dashboard blow up, but I haven’t seen any other problems on the site, so I’m tolerating the blown up Dashboard so that the videos I have on the site will work properly. If you guys notice any weirdness with the videos, please contact me, ok? Thanks.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and RSS feeds. This is another favorite of mine, so it’s also another one that I hope gets fixed sooner than later.

I’ll be checking these frequently until I see that they’re working again and I can reactivate them. When I can, I’ll let you know, in case you use any of them, too.

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