Brand New and/or Improved Features:

• Native tagging support
• Update notification
• Canonical URLs
• Pending Review
• Advanced WYSIWYG
• Full Atom 1.0 support
• New jQuery
• Taxonomy system
• New method of doing SQL queries

Because of the plugin compatibility issue, I’ll be waiting a while before I jump in and upgrade my WordPress installation. Also, there are a few plugins I heavily use that will be updated soon by the author and I want to make sure all my plugins work when I do the upgrade. I know I’ll be spending a lot of my time doing research on the plugins and other issues involving tags. I wish I did it earlier like my friend Jhay who installed WP 2.3 RC 1 on one of his blogs.

For those who are intimidated or afraid of doing the upgrade, you don’t have to be. Just make sure you backup all your files especially your database. Then check if the plugins you’re currently using are compatible to WP 2.3 and update them to the latest version if you need to. You can check the plugin compatibility list for the plugins that work or don’t work.

If you’re using a plugin that doesn’t work with 2.3, you can look for an alternative plugin. I’ve already downloaded several plugins that will replace some of the plugins that I use which don’t work with 2.3 (in case the author won’t update them) and downloaded some plugins that are designed just for WP 2.3. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask help from your friends, other bloggers who have done the upgrade, plugin authors or from bloggers who you think can help you.

One more thing. Make sure you download all your plugins and WordPress 2.3 only from reliable sources.

Have you upgraded to WordPress 2.3? Did you experience any issues or problems? What plugins did you have to uninstall or install for this new version? If not, what’s keeping you from doing the upgrade? Share your thoughts!

New User Features

• Tagging support
• Permalink redirection
• Improved comment editing

Developer / Power User Stuff

• Atom 1.0 support for feeds.
• Multiple format comment feeds, including Atom.
• Switched to jQuery for core JS, which is lighter and faster.
• Atom API support.
• Additional XML-RPC APIs for pages and such.
• phpmailer was integrated for performance and maintainability.

Future additions

• New permalink redirection stuff
• An additional bundled theme?
• Widgets?

Good news right? Well, not for everybody. Apparently, the tagging support that is included in WordPress 2.2 breaks the good old plugin called Ultimate Tag Warrior. The conflict is brought about by the is_tag() function that is used by both WordPress 2.2 and Ultimate Tag Warrior. That’s bad news for people including myself who are using UTW. Fortunately Moeffju has found a way of fixing the issue with a UTW hack. It involves editing the ultimate-tag-warrior.php file with your text editor and replacing all instances of the is_tag function with UTW_is_tag. After this, just activate the plugin and it’s done.

Just found out that WordPress 2.2 does provide an importer for UTW tags and so I guess it’s not that bad after all for us UTW users. But it still means that once you upgrade to 2.2, you’ll no longer be needing the UTW plugin. Too bad coz I’ve grown to love that plugin. One final word for those who plan to do the upgrade. Check for any conflicts that your existing WordPress plugins might have with WordPress 2.2 before doing the upgrade. Better safe than sorry is what I always say.