The New Look Dashboard 3.2 is out, about “Twenty Eleven” and a little more

WordPress has released their most significant upgrade up to date. This long awaited and most improved upgrade has catapulted WordPress.org into a higher level and will most certainly keep them on top forever. Addressing important matters and adding more possibilities with less difficulties. The announcement:

Here in the U.S. we are observing Independence Day, and I can’t think of a more fitting way to mark a day that celebrates freedom than by releasing more free software to help democratize publishing around the globe. I’m excited to announce that WordPress 3.2 is now available to the world, both as an update in your dashboard and a download on WordPress.org. Version 3.2 is our fifteenth major release of WordPress and comes just four months after 3.1 (which coincidentally just passed the 15 million download mark this morning), reflecting the growing speed of development in the WordPress community and our dedication to getting improvements in your hands as soon as possible. We’re dedicating this release to noted composer and pianist George Gershwin.

Before we get to the release, in anticipation of the State of the Word speech at the upcoming WordCamp San Francisco (the annual WordPress conference) we’re doing a survey or census of the WordPress world. If you have a moment, please fill out this survey and we’ll share what we learn by publishing the aggregate results in August.

The focus for this release was making WordPress faster and lighter. The first thing you’ll notice when you log in to 3.2 is a refreshed dashboard design that tightens the typography, design, and code behind the admin. (Rhapsody in Grey?) If you’re starting a new blog, you’ll also appreciate the fully HTML5 new Twenty Eleven theme, fulfilling our plan to replace the default theme every year. Learn More

Here are the new features:

Highlights

• Refreshed Administrative UI – Admin redesign
• New Default Theme “Twenty Eleven” – Uses the latest Theme Features
• Full Screen Editor – Distraction free writing experience
• Extended Admin Bar – More useful links to control the site

• Requirements Changes-
  • PHP 5.2.4 or greater (old requirement – since WordPress 2.5 was PHP 4.3 or greater)
  • MySQL 5.0.15 or greater (old requirement – since WordPress 2.9 was MySQL 4.1.2 or greater)

• Enhanced Browser Compatibility-
  • Drop Internet Explorer 6 support
  • Start End-of-life (EOL) cycle for Internet Explorer 7
  • Browse Happy notify users of out-of-date browser

WordPress is Faster and Lighter-

• Faster page loads — We’ve gone through the most commonly loaded pages in WP and done improvements to their load time
• Faster Upgrades — The update system now support incremental upgrades so after 3.2 you’ll find upgrading faster than ever
• Optimizations to WP_Filesystem — Updates over FTP are now much quicker and less error prone
• Stream downloads to the filesystem — Improves update times and lowers the memory footprint
• Performance improvements for wptexturize()
• Remove PHP4 compatibility including timezone support….Learn More

There’s much improvement and I am very satisfied. The edit window is much more clearer and adjusts to all the gadgets uploaded to it. Where before one would hesitate in expanding the editor because of difficulties, would be more beneficial now. It is organized now and works great. When you visit your site directly from the the Dashboard area, you will see the extra buttons that emerge when you scroll to the top of your Blog. It is not a completely new feature but WordPress.org has added even more features, very well done!

Please familiarize yourself with all the newest buttons, so you can work on your Blog in a more sufficient and effective manner. You will save lots of time now and we all know how valuable time is in the world we live in.

Which brings me to the the “Twenty Eleven” Theme and the question everyone is asking, Is it worth using. Well, first of all, anything that is free, is worth trying. Especially when it’s a WordPress.org creation because it’s built to work best in the WordPress architectural environment. Let’s take a look at the Twenty Eleven theme  which was automatically downloaded for you and placed there with the rest of your other themes:

Twenty Eleven is the default theme for WordPress in 2011. There are tons of really cool improvements and features packed into it — more Post Formats, beautiful new header images, alternate color schemes and layouts, even custom link colors. All those features add up to the best part of Twenty Eleven: just how customizable it is. It looks great as a blog, a showcase of all your posts, and even a tumblelog or photolog.

Post format

Twenty Eleven features seven Post Formats that help the look of your blog posts better match what you’re publishing. Alongside the Standard Format (for traditional blog posts and longer articles) are six additional Formats; Aside, Link, Gallery, Status, Quote, and Image.

The Aside Format is for shorter posts of about 1 paragraph. Because they’re shorter and meant to be digested quickly the title of the Aside post is hidden on Index pages.

The Link Format looks a lot like the Aside post but if you’re using the Twenty Eleven Ephemera Widget to display a list of your recent Aside and Link posts (found in Appearance → Widgets) the title of your Link posts will point to the URL of the first link in your post instead of pointing back to the post on your blog…..Learn More

Here’s a Demo of Twenty Eleven:

Twenty Eleven uses Sticky Posts to power the Featured Post area on the Showcase Page Template. And it’s pretty easy to use. Just publish a Sticky Post and it’ll show up in the Featured Post area. If you add a Featured Image the same size as the Custom Header Image it’ll be used as a full-width image link to the post. If your Featured Image is smaller, it will neatly float to the right of your content. Neat, huh? If you have more than one Sticky Post featured you can view up to 10 of them on the showcase page using the circular links that appear at the bottom left of the Featured Post area. Totally neat…..Read More

But it is very important and actually necessary now, to create a child theme. The great news is its simplicity:

It is time for Twenty Eleven Child Theme

Twenty Eleven child theme is now should be made when you want to modify Twenty Eleven, the default theme or WP 3.2 which is already available for everyone who use wordpress, and find wordpress updates is necessary to do.

I have upgrade this blog successfully without any issues, but like usual, there are a lot of users who have problems after wordpress upgrades which may be caused by alot of things, can be plugins or even themes.

I hope your blog stays cool and runs as usual if you have upgrade yours. If not, if you have just installed wordpress 3.2 in your webserver, then I hope you will have fun with Wp 3.2 +

I remember about a year ago, I wanted to create a video tutorial about Twenty Ten child theme.

However, I already found so many tutorials about it, and I thought the newest wp version will be released very soon, and soon, that tutorial would be less needed, so I guess it is a good time to create this Twenty Eleven child theme.

This tutorial is very simple actually, which works on mostly on the css style. (related: how to edit css file in wordpress). Apart of on the CSS file, I would use this Twenty Ten child theme to modify header a bit.

Twenty Eleven Child Theme – Why do we need it?

Just like Twenty Ten theme, the previous default theme or template, when we make modifications or customizations on the structure or layout, we would be happy what we can do……Read More

More on Child Themes here and Here’s a great editor, Notepad Plus Plus to use.