WordPress.org

The WordPress community is very proud to present the next generation of WordPress to the world, our 2.0 “Duke” release, named in honor of jazz pianist and composer Duke Ellington. We’ve been working long and hard to bring you this release, and I hope you enjoy using it as much as we’e enjoyed working on it. In this release we’ve focused a tremendous amount on what we believe to be the core of blogging — the writing interface. Before you upgrade from an earlier version, remember that this is a major release and thousands of lines of code have changed. Before upgrading it’s always good, just in case, to make a backup of your database and WordPress files. It only takes a few minutes and gives you a total safety net if for whatever reason things don’t work. It is also probably a good idea to turn off your plugins, and activate them one-by-one after you’ve upgraded. Without further ado, you can download WordPress 2 right now. Read on for more information about what we think you’ll love about Duke.

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As many of you know, we’re constantly tweaking and updating our web hosting page based on feedback we get from you. Well today we’re very excited to announce we’re adding a new host to the page with a familiar name – Yahoo! We’ve been working with the Yahoo Small Business team to create a solution that gives professional bloggers exactly what they want from their hosting providers.

When we started, Yahoo asked “What would the perfect blog host do?” and their team has been really amazing in executing on a really kick-ass platform for serious bloggers. It took a little while, but slow cooking makes good eating. (Like WordPress 2.0!)

We think the hosting is good for all the baseline features you should expect — tons of storage, bandwidth, Yahoo reliability, etc. (You probably heard all about that in their Movable Type announcement last week.) However we think they’re worth featuring because of three key things:

• With just a few clicks, Yahoo Web Hosting will install WordPress 2.0 complete with a few choice plugins and themes. Setup one blog or two dozen in seconds.
• They will also upgrade your WordPress when a new stable release or update is available, meaning it is a zero-maintenance solution on par with WordPress.com.
• Finally, every Yahoo Hosting customer gets a free Pro-Blogger Akismet license ($5/mo value) and Akismet is auto-enabled on new installations, meaning that spam is less of an issue on Yahoo WordPress blogs. (Much like their stellar email spam handling.) Read more about this.

Guy Yalif from Yahoo says, “We believe that by adding WordPress’ blogging application to our leading web hosting product, we are providing a top notch, scalable, and reliable solution for less than $12 per month.”

We think the above makes a very compelling case for WordPress users to check out Yahoo hosting, and see what we believe is the best WordPress hosting experience on the Web. As always, if you have any feedback on Yahoo or any other host we feature, please let us know.

The next release of WordPress is drawing near. Please help us shake out any last remaining bugs by downloading and testing the 2.0 Release Candidate. If all goes well, the Release Candidate will become 2.0 final. We’re almost there. Download, test, and head over to the Beta Forum to let us know if the Release Candidate is ready for prime time. Downloads taken down. Go get the real thing!