WordPress is a publishing platform, commonly used for blogs, but it can also be used as a CMS platform or usual website. WordPress is 100% free for download and you will only have to pay for premium themes or plugins, but more than 99% of them are also offered free.

Unlike other publishing platforms, Wordpress doesn’t require any web design or programming skills, because everything is installed and configured from the administration panel, so even a less skilled computer user can use it very easily.

WordPress 2.8 comes with an auto installer for Themes, plugins and an auto upgrade feature, so you don’t have to do anything, except choosing the theme or plugin you want to install and enter the FTP username and password.

What’s new in Wordpress 2.9.1:

• Code editor bug in Safari fixed.
• Update-core.php improved.
• Increased download timeout.
• upgrade.php foxed for MySQL < 4.1.0

What’s new in Wordpress 2.9:

• Deleted articles now go to trash and can be restored.
• The gallery shortcode now supports ‘include’ and ‘exclude’.
• single pages now feature the ‘rel=canonical’ meta tag.
• SimplePie updated to 1.2.
• TinyMCE updated to 3.2.7.
• ‘get_sample_permalink_html’ filter added.

What’s new in Wordpress 2.8.5:

• A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen.
• Removal of areas within the code where php code in variables was evaluated.
• Switched the file upload functionality to be whitelisted for all users including Admins.
• Retiring of the two importers of Tag data from old plugins.

What’s new in Wordpress 2.8 Baker Final:

• New drag-and-drop widgets admin interface and new widgets API.
• Syntax highlighting and function lookup built into plugin and theme editors.
• Browse the theme directory and install themes from the admin.
• Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns.
• Allow configuring the number of items to show on management pages with an option in Screen Options.
• Support timezones and automatic daylight savings time adjustment.
• Support IIS 7.0 URL Rewrite Module.
• Faster loading of admin pages via script compression and concatenation.

Wordpress 2.8 Baker Final

What’s new in Wordpress 2.8 RC1 ( Release Candidate 1 ):

• CSS tweaks on the plugins screen.
• CodePress can be disabled from Screen Options.
• CSS tweak for vertical misalignment in user-edit.php.
• Better WP Upgrader.
• Noindex for login page.
• Default orderby for tt_id query fixed.
• A lot of bug fixes.

What’s new in Wordpress 2.8 Beta 2:

• Rename new function to sanitize_html_class() to hilight exactly what it is for.
• Standardize on UTC.
• Introduce sanitise_css_classname() and use it to give categories, tags, users etc meaningful classnames where possible. Falls back to the id if not.
• Allow multiple search form templates.
• Fix cursor for folded menu.
• Make get_terms() orderby case insensitive.
• Add post ID arg to edit_post_link().
• Use Stylesheet instead of Template to key theme data when doing theme update check.
• Show “Delete” in Media -> Add New.
• Fix comment paging for static front page.
• Remove background color fix for quick edit button bar.
• Use get_the_author_meta().
• seems_utf8() cleanup.
• Fix load_plugin_textdomain() phpdoc.
• Throttle generic pings to no more than once per hour.
• Make sure filter IDs are unique.
• Pass text direction to wp_die(). Allow locales to set text direction in local packages.

What’s new in Wordpress 2.8 Beta 1:

• Theme installer.
• Codepress syntax highlighter for theme and plugin editors.
• Tags accessible without AJAX in the admin panel.
• Better Sidebar Widget arrangement.
• Better Press This.
• Allow editing of all plugin files.
• Better plugin search.
• Autosave post shortkey.
• Support for more galleries on the same page/post.
• Description for tags.
• Improved Database Performance.
• TinyMCE 3.2.3.
• New WP_Widget class.
• Added the_modified_author template tag.
• Improved XMLRPC.
• New get_the_author_meta and the_author_meta functions.
• jQuery 1.3.2.

And many more.