COMING SOON: Advanced Blogging in EasyBlog 2.1

After the initial birth of EasyBlog 2.0, we haven't been really working on additional features as we are trying to assist users to build / migrate over from EasyBlog 1.8.x and quite frankly, it wasn't a walk in the park.

We had to help users migrate their themes and revert any modifications done on the older version. It was tough and it wasn't easy but it's the best way to do it.

Moving forward...

EasyBlog 2.1 -- there won't be any massive code rewrites as the previous version as we have already made the jump to a new theme architecture in 2.0. We liked the idea of a one-click operation so the next version of EasyBlog will definitely live up to its name.

So what features are there in this new release? I wouldn't be disclosing every single functionality of the new release yet (we love giving you guys surprises). This time, I'll only be disclosing some of the new cool features that we've been working on.

Slick Media Manager
Remember the image manager that you are so used to embed images in the blog posts? It has now been re-branded as File Manager. The reason behind this is because the media manager now allows you to upload and manage not only images but files. For instance, you might want to embed zip archives or any other archives which allows you freely share to your visitors and the new file manager does the job for you.

Unified Editor
Yep, you heard it right. This is not so much of a major update but I definitely think this is worth being mentioned! We have stripped off the introtext altogether and consolidated them into one text editor. Most of you had actually requested for this, including yours truly, simply because it doesn't make much sense for bloggers to fill in two separate editors when they really should focus on writing blogs!

Meet Miss Zemanta
Zemanta is more like a personal assistant in the blogsphere. It works by showing tips and advises by suggesting related contents (images, articles, keywords, etc) based on the content that is being written. It's really a cool tool I must say especially if you want to jazz up your blog like a pro. EasyBlog is ready for it! Learn more about Zemanta and see how it will help you get more traffic to your site, too.

Email to Blog
With all the advanced mobile gadgets and smartphones these days, this feature might seem that we're jumping into the bandwagon. Love it or hate it, these gadgets are here to stay and we've got EasyBlog ready for it. As the title suggests, this feature allows bloggers to update their blogs via email in real time, at any where they are. As long as they have a mobile device with an Internet connection, they are good to post a blog anywhere!

Location Service
You can now tag your blog posts with your current location. This adds more social elements into your blog postings. Every blog post that are tagged with a location will automatically display a nice little map beneath the blog post pointing out the location where the blog is posted from.

UI Improvements
Well, we thought EasyBlog 2.0 had one of the best user interface experience but apparently there are still some grey areas which we had to improve on -- especially on the administration area and the hassle to go through the upgrades. In the next version, we'll be offering you a one-click upgrade process which looks through a list of modified files and download them accordingly.

There you have it. Just a few of the goodies coming your way in the next version of EasyBlog to get you charged!