With the recent release of WordPress 2.8 this past week, there has been a number of complications and/or frustrations from the WordPress community, leading to a lot of discussion about how long you should wait to upgrade WordPress when a new branch is released.  Historically the WordPress team has always done a great job of testing their releases, which I think lead to a strong confidence from the WordPress community when it was time to upgrade.   Combine that with the one-click upgrade option that is now built into WordPress and the annoying tag reminding you to upgrade, and you’ve got a huge number of people who upgraded to WordPress 2.8 immediately upon its release.

Unfortunately, with each new WordPress branch comes changes which sometimes break WordPress plugins, create problems with the WordPress theme you are using, and usually includes changes to the code.   If you upgrade before the themes or plugins you rely on have been updated, this can cause problems.   The iThemes team recently touched on this subject with their post, When Should I Upgrade WordPress?  Their post also includes five helpful things that need done BEFORE you do your one-click upgrade:

1. Make a backup of all your site data
2. Upgrade of all your plugins
3. Visit plugin and theme author websites
4. Disable all plugins
5. Ask yourself if you need to upgrade now

I also recommend waiting a week or so to view feedback before upgrading.

I know several of you haven’t upgraded WordPress to 2.8 yet.   How long do you plan on waiting until you upgrade your WordPress installation?  Please include which version of WordPress you are currently using with your comment!

In case you haven’t noticed it yet in your WordPress dashboard, it looks like WordPress 2.8 has officially been released!  Don’t forget if you are currently using WordPress 2.7 or 2.7.1, you can use the one-click upgrade feature built into WordPress to upgrade! 

The changes from WordPress 2.7 aren’t as noticable as they were from 2.6 to 2.7, but it is always worth upgrading to the latest installation in my opinion.   As far as what is new, here is what the WordPress team had to say about the improvements in WordPress 2.8:

Major New Improvements

First and foremost, 2.8 is way faster to use. We’ve changed the way WordPress does style and scripting.

The core and plugin updaters in previous versions of WordPress have been such a success we decided to bring the same to themes. You can now browse the entire theme directory and install a theme with one click from the comfort of your WordPress dashboard.

If you make edits or tweaks to themes or plugins from your dashboard, you’ll appreciate the new CodePress editor which gives syntax highlighting to the previously-plain editor. Also there is now contextual documentation for the functions in the file you’re editing linked right below the editor.

If you were ever frustrated with widgets before, this release should be your savior. We’ve completely redesigned the widgets interface (which we didn’t have time to in 2.7) to allow you to do things like edit widgets on the fly, have multiple copies of the same widget, drag and drop widgets between sidebars, and save inactive widgets so you don’t lose all their settings. Developers now have access to a much cleaner and robust API for creating widgets as well.

Finally you should explore the new Screen Options on every page. It’s the tab in the top right. Now, for example, if you have a wide monitor you could set up your dashboard to have four columns of widgets instead of the two it has by default. On other pages you can change how many items show per page.

You can view the entire list of changes here.

Going into WordCamp Chicago this weekend, there were a large number of rumors that WordPress 2.8 was VERY close to an official release.   Well, the weekend has come and gone and unfortunately we got no official release, but it looks like we have gotten the first release candidate instead.

According to the official WordPress blog, WordPress 2.8 Release Candidate 1 was officially released about an hour ago.   Here is their release candidate 1 official announcement:

With Release Candidate 1, we think WordPress 2.8 is ready and complete.  Download it, test it, and tell us what you think.  If you don’t uncover any bad bugs, 2.8 will be released on Wednesday the 10th.

If you’re interested in what has changed since beta 2, consult the changelog.

You can download Release Candidate 1 here, and consult the changelog from Beta 2 here.   If you are wondering what all is new with WordPress 2.8, check out this post by TechnoSailor.

Just a quick note to our readers know that WordPress 2.8 has now moved to Beta 2.   You can see the changes here.  If you are interested in giving it a try, you can download it here.

Note: If you aren’t comfortable using beta software, we recommend you hold off on using WordPress 2.8 until the first release candidate is announced.

For those of you who love to be on the cutting edge, you’ll be happy to learn that the Beta 1 version of WordPress 2.8 is now available for download.   As always, with these types of releases, we recommend you use it in a test environment, rather than using it on a live website/blog.   I usually recommend people wait until the release candidates (RC) before you can be comfortable using it on a live site.

For those interested, here are a few of the things included with the WordPress 2.8 Beta 1 release:

• New Theme Installer routines
• Add CodePress syntax highlighting to Theme and Plugin editors
• Use “Custom Header” for menu text and revise Default theme to reflect change
• Separate Comments into a separate postbox, from Discussion postbox, on the Edit Post screen
• Make tags accessible without Javascript on the edit screen
• Don’t ask for confirmation when marking a comment as spam
• Don’t notify post author of own comments
• Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns as set via the Screen Options tab
• Add column “Rating” in Administration > Links > Edit
• Improve installer to help people entering wrong email addresses
• Per Page option for plugins
• Show absolute date instead of relative date for scheduled posts
• Autosave post/page when pressing Control/Command+S
• Add toggle all button to the Gallery tab in the uploader
• Support more than one gallery on the same page
• Add per page option to Screen Options for comments, posts, pages, media, categories, and tags
• Show Tools menu for all users so they can access Turbo
• Fix most popular link category list
• Add description field for tags
• “Choose a city in the same timezone as you” for Timezone in Administration > Settings > General
• In upgrade process, provide better explanation for database upgrade message
• Enforce unique email addresses in Add/Edit users
• Hide things that need to be available to screen readers via offscreen positioning
• Use invisible class for hiding labels and legends
• Use a semantic class name for text targeted to screen readers

To those who are interested in putting WordPress 2.8 to the test, you can download it here.