Upgrading to WordPress 2.3

WordPress v2.3 was released on September 24. Since upgrading WordPress can be a hassle, this blogger tends to lag several versions behind. My blog was running on v2.1.2 and given there were reported security issues with that version, I took the plunge into upgrading.

Version 2.3 has a couple of pretty nice features.

Being the user and abuser of plugins that I am, I was particularly interested in having the new Update Notification that 2.3 provides. Now you can see from your Dashboard: 1) when a new version of WordPress is available; and 2) when a new version of a plugin you are using is available. No big deal on the WP version notification as that’s generally well publicized. But getting plugin update notices is very helpful, especially if you run a lot of them.

If you tend to have a lot of draft posts, schedule future posts, or if you update older posts with any frequency there is a great update to the post management system in 2.3. You can search by post type (draft, published, scheduled, etc), keywords, category, etc. Very handy stuff..

One new feature that looks useful for multi-author blogs is a new post status of “pending review”. This would allow an author to save a post in draft OR pending review status and would help prevent the group blog manager from posting a contributor’s draft article before it was ready.

Tagging is now built into v2.3. I’m not a “tag cloud” fan as I prefer categories. And there are plenty of tagging plugins that are more than capable if that’s what you want to use. So I don’t see much point in upgrading just for the integrated tagging. Lot’s of folks out there love it though.

The advanced visual editor was also enhanced, though since I use a WYSIWYG plugin, this feature doesn’t do anything for me. It could prove helpful though for those who use the built in WP editor. What remains to be seen is if the incredibly annoying tendency of any WP WYSIWYG to strip out HTML code (particularly the <embed> tag) has been fixed. I haven’t heard that it has, so likely that issue is still there.

The are numerous “under the hood” improvements that only the most geekified (ie: developers and plugin authors) will appreciate.

Full details on the version changes are here.

The upgrading itself is typical WordPress. Download and extract the updated files, delete old files, FTP new ones, etc. etc.

My personal upgrading tips:

1. Follow the extended upgrade directions. Don’t opt for the “3 step process”. It’s just not worth the potential headache to take shortcuts.
2. REALLY follow the directions. Don’t say, “Oh, I don’t need to backup first” or, “It won’t hurt if I don’t deactivate plugins”. Trust me. Just follow the directions step by step.
3. Keep this URL handy in case you run into problems: Searching the Net for WordPress Help. I got a cryptic database error when I upgraded. Searching for the error led me to a direct resolution. Without that search, my blog would still be broken. You probably won’t need it. But if you do, it’s a blogsaver.
4. When you turn your plugins back on, turn them on one at a time and check to see if anything is broken! As with any new version, some plugins are not compatible, and the “plugin compatibility list” is not complete (though it gets better daily, and should be referenced). Again, this is not a place you want to take shortcuts.

There you have it. 2.3 has been out for a week without a 2.3.1 being released, so it should be safe to upgrade. If you are running 2.2.x, I am not aware of any security issues (doesn’t mean there aren’t any), so you may just want to upgrade if the new features appeal to you. However, 2.1.x has a known security flaw (especially 2.1.1), and you really should upgrade if you are running that version.

Just really follow the directions and you should be fine. And don’t even think about upgrading until you backup your blog database (which you are already doing regularly anyway, right?). Here is some info on backing up. It’s much simpler to use the discussed database backup plugin than to go through phpMyAdmin or MySQL commands.