WordPress 2.3 – How Is It?
Online - 4 Comments » - Posted on September, 25 at 12:48 pm
So I’m interested in hearing from the people who have already upgraded to WordPress 2.3. How do you like the tagging system that it includes now? The notifications and the cannonical urls? Those are the features that I am most interested in hearing about.
Specifically though, I’d like to hear from people who, like me, were already using a tagging plugin like UTW. Do you like the changes to the tagging system that this new version utilizes, even though it’s missing key features that made tagging and managing one’s tags a breeze? Did you have to go back and re-tag every post you made or were you able to import them and if so how?
The reason I ask these questions is because I can’t really see a reason to upgrade to 2.3. There were no major security fixes, version 2.2.3 took care of those. The features that everyone is raving about, well I’ve already got plugins doing that for me, so I’m having a hard time understanding why I should upgrade. 
So yes, I just want to hear some first-hand feedback to decide for myself if I should or shouldn’t upgrade.
Thanks guys!
Tagged: 2.3, blogging, blogs, wordpress, wpPosted in Online | 4 Comments »
Joana the Goddess has 1004 comments
Julie the Demigod has 897 comments
Charity the Mage has 223 comments
Mari the Apprentice has 150 comments
Fruityoaty the Initiate has 41 comments
Honest truth, 2.3 isn’t worth upgrading to. I upgraded mostly so my host doesn’t have a fit about it. But it’s not worth it really. Many plugins either don’t work at all with it or need to be upgraded. You have to edit themes and templates in order to actually use the tagging feature properly and the code that I found for doing it, caused syntax errors when I edited a theme to include it.
To me, it wssn’t worth messing with. The tagging plugins still work with it, so that’s not actually a problem, but I feel like 2.3 was a waste of time.
Charity,
I was wondering if that might be the case. I was hearing about how some people upgraded but their plugins required a table that is no longer there in the new version in order to function. But when they downgraded back to 2.2.3 another table that was necessary was deleted in the process. SO if they didn’t have a recent backup of their DB they were screwed.
Thank you for sharing Charity.
You just saved this blogger a whole hell of a lot of hassle.
Mari has to disagree with Charity. It adds the true tagging feature Mari has so anxiously waited for forever. (Mari hated UTW for being non-compatible with WordPress Export files, and Mari does a lot of importing and exporting WordPress files behind the scenes.) It also has a few dozen bug fixes, so you’ll notice it working better.
The only problem is if you just upgrade willy-nilly. If you use a plugin that isn’t compatible and don’t check the list and deactivate/uninstall it before upgrading…your site will break. However, in the Dashboard, there are buttloads of helpful links and guides to upgrading. It’s all really just precaution and using your noggin.
One big improvement is the lack of a big obnoxious tag cloud loading on your write post page in the Dashboard. Mari had a bazillion tags on Misstuned, so that was a big hassle and it really slowed down loading time (it drove Mari to uninstall UTW via deleting the table in PHPMyAdmin). Another truly amazing feature is an actual ability to hide the “Tags:” section of the post if there are no tags. In UTW, even if you used an “if” in the tagging PHP call (to prevent the theme from breaking should the plugin be deactivated), the “Tags:” word still showed because the plugin was active, even if you didn’t ever touch the tag entry form in the post admin. However, in 2.3, if there are no tags for an entry, and you use an if, the tags only display if you entered them. For posts with no tags, there’s no stupid empty metadata showing.
Then again, Mari’s just super-picky about her site. *shrug*
Just FYI, Mari didn’t upgrade Misstuned yet (too many plugins to worry about). Mari’s been messing with 2.3 behind the scenes on test subdomains and on her personal domain.
Mari,
Ah but that list of plugins isn’t very extensive sadly. Most of mine aren’t listed on there, although I have stumbled on some blogs that do use some of mine [not listed] and have reported errors with 2.3. Unfortunately they’re plugins I can’t stand loosing either.
Massive tag cloud? Mari, um dear, you didn’t have to have it load in a tag cloud. ^^; You can change it to be a drop down list, which believe me, does not take any time to load.
They’ve just announced that 2.3.1 is due out in a month and that 2.4 can be expected some time very soon which tells me that 2.3 isn’t all that it was expected to be. I’m just going to play it safe and wait for 2.4 to come out.