The WordPress development team has been super hard at work and have released version 3.5 of the WordPress software, nicknamed Elvin. We have been playing with the preview versions for a while and think it’s a superb upgrade. Here are our favorite features.
New Media Manager
Uploading images, organize and re-ordering them, and adding images into your post has been streamlined in the brand new Media manager. It’s also much easier to add a gallery of images with the image picker.
The Media library is completely different and may take some getting used to, but it’s a welcome upgrade. Since it’s such a big change, you may want to watch our bite-sized knowledge base videos on Adding Photos and Images and Using the Media Library.
Our videos require a ClickWP account (sign up for free!) and have all been updated for WordPress 3.5.
Enhanced oEmbed support
We really love the photo sharing service Instagram, and WordPress 3.5 now adds automatic embed support for the service. Simply place the URL of your Instagram photo on a new line like this:
http://instagram.com/p/Q_jEgdkNjg/
And when you publish the post it magically turns into this:
(Follow me on Instagram for more pictures of my little kiddo)
Along with Instagram, WordPress 3.5 now supports automatic embeds for SlideShare.net and Soundcloud.
Plugin Favorites
A new feature was introduced to the WordPress plugin repository 1-2 months back: The ability to mark plugins as favorites. And in WordPress 3.5, you can view your favorite plugins directly from the Install Plugins screen!
This is such a useful and time-saving feature, especially since there are so many plugins now. *Fist bump* to the person who thought of this feature!
New look Admin screens
Finally, the admin screens have been updated and are sharper looking. The buttons are a different shape and those of you on high resolution devices like the iPad will see crisper icons. I’m really impressed at how WordPress keeps up with larger web trends in general and glad that they take the time to implement small touches like this.
Finally, the WordPress team made a 2-minute video overview to introduce WordPress 3.5 “Elvin”.
Upgrade today
Upgrading is easy! Login to your WordPress Admin → Dashboard → Updates and click the Update Now button. Updates are relatively bulletproof, but do take the time to backup your site just in case your server has a hiccup. We recommend BackupBuddy for 1-click WordPress backups.
Alternatively, our WordPress support plans will take care of backing up and upgrading your WordPress site. Get in touch if you’d like to find out more.
Enjoy the new features in WordPress 3.5!










Stop WordPress spam in 2 minutes on your WordPress blog
Credit: Randy Glasbergen
Unfortunately, spam is an inevitable part of life. We get it in our email every day, and as website administrators and bloggers, we get it in the form of spam comments. Comment spam is created by spambots who crawl the internet looking for forms that they can dump their spam payload and move on to the next.
Spam comments are easy to spot after a while.
1. They have a generic message that doesn’t make any reference to the content in your blog post or page.
2. Instead of names, these ‘commenters’ identify themselves with keywords like ‘online dating’, ‘cheap viagra’ or ‘louis vuitton handbags’.
3. The content of their comment contains links to shopping websites, pharmaceutical websites and other pages that are totally irrelevant to your blog post.
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