Another good thing about the delay is that it gives us WordPress users, theme and plugin authors more time to prepare. Here are the changes in WordPress 2.5 that could affect the performance and functionality of some plugins:

• Admin Menu Changes
• Admin Screens
• Activation Global Scope
• Hook Changed: restrict_manage_posts
• TinyMCE Upgrade to Version 3

For a more detailed description on these changes, check out this document on Migrating Plugins and Themes to WordPress 2.5. Also, if you want to check whether the plugins you’re currently using are compatible with WordPress 2.5 or not, go over and take a look at the Plugin Compatibility list.

So far, only one of the plugins I’m currently using has a conflict but unfortunately it’s one of my favorite plugins – the Tiger Style Admin. With too many admin changes in WordPress 2.5, this plugin won’t work any more. Too bad coz I really like this plugin and I know many of you guys do too. Also, the Tiger Style Admin fix I posted last month becomes useless. I do hope the author would update it or someone would create a new admin theme just like it for the new version of WordPress.

If you can’t wait to get your hands on WordPress 2.5 or can’t wait to see how the new interface looks like, you can try and see it for yourself on this demo blog provided by Chris Johnston. Btw, the version of WordPress used for this demo blog is a beta version so some of the stuff you see could be different in the final version.

Lastly, to help you prepare and make your blog ready for WordPress 2.5, make sure you go over and read this WordPress Upgrade Preparation Checklist by Lorelle VanFossen.

Is your blog ready for WordPress 2.5? Have you updated your themes and plugins? Do you have any plugins currently installed that have issues or conflicts with WordPress 2.5? I’d like to hear your thoughts and opinion.

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!

WP 2.3 changes the database schema in 3 ways but the one with the biggest impact are the taxonomy related changes. What happened is that the development team decided to drop the categories, post2cat, and link2cat tables. This means that any plugin that use or require these tables will break.

In my case, there’s one particular plugin I’m using which is really important to my blog and is affected by this issue: the UTW or Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin. I hope the author would find a way to fix the problem or that the WordPress development team would make it easy for UTW users to import tags used by the plugin into the WordPress tagging system.

The WordPress community has started a list to help users and plugin authors to identify which plugins are working/compatible with WordPress 2.3 and which ones don’t or needs updating. To find out the compatibility of your current plugins, check out the WordPress 2.3 plugin compatibility list.

Btw, those of you who have been testing WordPress 2.3 Beta, you are encouraged to add to the plugins that you’re using and categorize them whether they work or needs work.

UPDATED: 1/25/07

Upgrading to WordPress 2.1 wasn’t that difficult as I thought it would be. After talking to Abe of Yugatech, and how he upgraded to WordPress 2.1, I was convinced that I could do it and that I didn’t have to wait that long to upgrade.

In my earlier post, I mentioned about plugin compatibility. It turns out that it isn’t that much of a problem. Alex King also mentioned about this in his recent post. I just had to upgrade a few of the plugins that I was using and some of the plugins that weren’t even in the list of compatible plugins didn’t even needed to be upgraded.

Here’s a list of the plugins that I updated:

1. flickrRss
2. WP-Useronline
3. Feedburner plugin
4. Get Recent comments
5. the-excerpt-reloaded
6. WP Database Backup
7. WP-DB Manager
8. Sideblog WordPress plugin
9. Subscribe to Comments

Note: when updating the flickrRss & WP-Useronline plugins, activate them when you already upgraded to WordPress 2.1

For those using Akismet, check your plugin version and upgrade it to version 2.0. I also updated my Tiger Style Admin plugin to v 3.0.

So before you upgrade to WordPress 2.1, you need to do three things:
1. Check your plugins and update them.
2. Check that your webhost’s is running a MySQL 4.0+ version.
3. Backup your files.

You can read more detailed instructions about upgrading to WordPress 2.1 and plugin compatibility from articles by Lorelle VanFossen and Maria Langer.

UPDATE: WordPress 2.1 “Ella” is now available for download.

WordPress 2.1 “Ella” is going to be released tomorrow. This will be the first major release since version 2.0. WordPress 2.1 as any other typical major release will address security & bug fixes and also feature new functionality.

Not all people are happy with the release of WordPress 2.1, mainly because of plugin compatibility. Many plugins won’t work with 2.1 because of the deprecation of database table variables. My blogger friend Jhay talked about this earlier. I still have to check whether the plugins I use for this blog are compatible or not, then I’ll decide whether to upgrade or not.

Here’s a list of compatible plugins.

Are you ready for WordPress 2.1? Will you immediately upgrade? Before you do just that, there are some important things that you need to know about it.

Aaron Brazell talks about the 10 things you should know about WordPress 2.1