WordPress 2.9 Feature Overview
Anytime there is a new version of software released, users always ask, “Should I upgrade?” The pains of software upgrades have historically included cost, deployment, and compatibility. One of the great things about WordPress is that the cost is nothing – it’s free – and deployment with one click upgrades are pretty easy. Thus, the only real risk you have is WordPress 2.9 plugin compatibility.
Before we get to our recommendation, let’s review some of the features of WordPress 2.9. This was done earlier today in a post made by Joe Brockmeier, who provided some insight into what WordPress 2.9 has to offer. Per his post, I took away the following points about WordPress 2.9:
- Trash Feature which allows you to recover deleted comments and posts
- Image editing functionality and new improvements in multimedia embedding
- 84 new things for developers to tinker with, which means better themes and plugins are coming soon (developer details).
- The end of the “Hello World” post. . .it has been replaced with something more meaningful for new installations.
EduChalk.Org was kind enough with their time to create a screencast walkthrough of WordPress 2.9 features and post it on YouTube. They add one more feature to the list, which is Post Thumbnail support for themes that support it. We’ve embedded their WordPress 2.9 features video in the upper right of this post.
Should You Upgrade?
I always look at WordPress upgrades based on three criteria. The first is the risk of the upgrade breaking your theme, plugins, or more. The second is security fixes. The thirds is whether the functionality and features in the upgrade are enticing enough.
Since none of the posts I have seen on WordPress 2.9 talk much about security patches, and we know that many of the 2.8 sub-releases really tightened up security, I’ll have to evaluate whether to upgrade to 2.9 based on functionality. (I’ll get to compatibility in just a second.)
If you look purely at the ability to recover a deleted post and edit images in the WordPress environment, I am predicting massive time savings for bloggers. The time savings in a week’s worth of posts alone would justify backing up a blog, upgrading it, and working out any plugin issues.
Therefore, my recommendation is going to be YES, definitely consider the upgrading to WordPress 2.9. However, I am going to make that recommendation with a the following to-do list before you upgrade:
- Wait two weeks after the release to see if there are any major glitches that are addressed in a sub-release. This will also give plugin developers a chance to create some updates. After all, it is the holidays so give them a few weeks.
- Google for information on key plugins such as All In One SEO, Platinum SEO, and TweetMeMe to make sure they don’t have problems with the WordPress 2.9 upgrade.
- Google for information related to your theme and problems associated with the WordPress 2.9 upgrade.
- If you haven’t already, install WP DB Backup and make a full backup of your database prior to the upgrade (email it to yourself).
- Stick close to Twitter and other good source of information prior to pushing “Upgrade”
If all stays as planned we might see a release of WordPress 2.9 before the end of this week. If not, it will be shortly thereafter. Keep your fingers crossed and let us know what you find in your testing, upgrades, and overall experience with WordPress 2.9.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
So it is not the better decision to upgrade at this time. We have to wait for some time.
If you feel comfortable enough to roll back to 2.8.9 if a plug-in or theme breaks when you upgrade to 2.9 then go for it. However if you rely on someone else to handle the technical aspects you may want to wait until the plug-in and theme developers get caught up with 2.9.
That said I just upgraded to 2.9 and everything went smoothly.
Matt, I've been flipping the switch over to WP2.9 for most of the sites I'm working on. No problems yet and we work across a variety of themes, plugins, and hosting.
One site that we had some hacking problems on, we nuked everything but WP-CONTENT and then copied over the files the old fashion way through FTP. BAM! Hacker got his/her door shut. Since this is such a smooth upgrade, might not be a bad approach to go old school on the upgrade.
Thx for details in post.
Just to update everyone, WP 2.9.1 upgrades have gone smoothly.