WordPress 2.9.1 has been released, and is now available for downloads. This release fixes several minor issues, and the bugs which caused problems with scheduling posts and pingbacks. Upgrade is not really necessary unless you are facing any of the issues listed here.

Another interesting fact shared by Ryan Boren is that WordPress 2.9 has already clocked a million downloads till date, now that is really good. If you have not yet upgraded to WordPress 2.9, read my earlier posts describing some of the best features in WordPress 2.9 or visit this entry on WordPress Codex.

You can download WordPress 2.9.1 from here or use the automatic upgrade feature to upgrade from the admin dashboard.

A few days back, Jeff had told you about WordPress 2.9.1 being around the corner. The WordPress team has worked hard to get it out of the doors and a beta version of WordPress 2.9.1 is now available for downloads. It fixes bugs with scheduled posts and pingbacks which some users had been facing, due to a bug in curl.

The new version is not immediately available for downloads through the automatic upgrade, however you can download the WordPress Beta tester plugin and go to Tools->Upgrade and perform an automatic upgrade.

Please remember that this is not the final WordPress 2.9.1 release, so you might want to wait for another day or two for a stable release, if you are not comfortable using beta versions.

Comments are the incentives you get for writing a post and if you write good ones you are bound to get 100s and 1000s of comments on your posts.

But wait not every comment on your blog is directly related to the post itself, there are times when commentators respond to other commentators, in short we call that a discussion.

Flashback to WordPress 2.7, there was a new introduction in the form of threaded comments, this was done so that people on your blog can comment and respond to each other and communicate and discuss.

Coming back to future, it has been so long and many users still do not have threaded comments on their blogs.

Reason 1: Most of the WordPress users are not programmers and use themes created by others, so unless they use a theme that has support for threaded comments they don’t make use of that feature.

Reason 2: Many users have knowledge to program and edit but are just plain lazy (example me) and do not update their themes to add threaded comments support.

Now how does one implement threaded comments in WordPress when we fall into the above two categories? Pretty simple, by using the power that WordPress itself provides users with, in the form of extensibility, in short with a WordPress plugin.

WordPress Thread Comment is a excellent choice for adding threaded comments to your blog without having to have any coding skills, once you install the plugin it does everything for you, you do not even have to edit your themes to add threaded comment support on your blog.

Another option is to use Brian’s Threaded Comments which was actually the first one to add threaded comments to WordPress blog, however it still requires users to do a bit of theme changes.

Of course there are other options available in the form of third party services, like, take for instance Automattic’s own Intense Debate and Disqus, these services make commenting and discussion more easier.

Now do you have an excuse for not having threaded comments on your blog? BTW do you use threaded comments? If not why, if yes how? Don’t stop short of just reading this we have threaded comments enabled so discuss as much you wish .

I would be thankful if you take part in this small poll with regards to threaded comments.

You can find more options for threaded comments by visiting this search on WordPress extend.

WordPress is pretty secure and they release updates periodically to fix loopholes, to stay safe you should always make sure to upgrade to the latest version of the software whenever they are available.

However there are several more ways in which you can protect your WordPress admin from getting misused or hacked.

The folks at WP Beginners have come up with a list of 11 vital tips to better protect your WordPress admin area, the tips include using a plugin to create stealth login URLs, limiting login attempts to a certain limit so that you don’t get hit with a brute force attack among other things.

11 Vital Tips and Hacks to Protect Your WordPress Admin Area

URL Shortening services are in vogue these days, however there are so many to choose from, which one should you use and which one should you not?

If you are a WordPress user, the dilemma ends here, WordPress now have their own URL shortening service in the form of WP.me, short and sweet right.

Highlights about WP.me

• WP.me is the only two-letter .me domain in the world.
• Every blog and post on WordPress.com has a WP.me URL now.
• These are all exposed in the <head> using rel=shortlink.
• It doesn’t work for any URL in the world, just WP.com-hosted ones.
• The links are permanent, they will work as long as WordPress.com is around.
• WP.me is spam-free, because we are constantly monitoring and removing spam from WP.com.

To learn more about this new URL Shortening service, check out this release post by Matt.