After the success we’ve had with new branch releases of the past few WordPress branches (2.6 and 2.7 both come to mind), it is a little surprising to see that we already have yet another security patch, this time being WordPress 2.8.3.  Because this is a security update, it is highly recommended that everyone take a moment to upgrade their WordPress installation.

Here is what the WordPress team had to say about the WordPress 2.8.3 security update:

Unfortunately, I missed some places when fixing the privilege escalation issues for 2.8.1.  Luckily, the entire WordPress community has our backs.  Several folks in the community dug deeper and discovered areas that were overlooked.  With their help, the remaining issues are fixed in 2.8.3.  Since this is a security release, upgrading is highly recommended.  Download 2.8.3, or upgrade automatically from your admin.

The ribbon reminder in your dashboard just showed up, so you can now do your automatic upgrade, or manually download WordPress 2.8.3 from here.

Although it isn’t very long after WordPress 2.8.1 was released, WordPress 2.8.2 was just released today and is a security update which corrects a XSS vulnerability which was discovered.   Comment author URLs were not fully sanitized when displayed in the admin. This could be exploited to redirect you away from the admin to another site.

Due to this being a security update, it is strongly recommended that you upgrade your WordPress 2.8 installations as soon as possible.  This can quickly and easily be done via your WordPress administrator panel (for WordPress 2.7 and newer installations) via Tools –> Upgrade, or you can manually download it here. 

If you’d like to read the official announcement, you can see it here.

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.