WordPress 2.8 – Jump Or Wait?

The long awaited WordPress 2.8 was released on 10th June and is causing the usual dilemmas for blog owners everywhere.

Do you upgrade now like a lemming following the crowd over the unseen cliff? – or wait for the dust to settle and at least have some chance of leaning over to try to pick out your landing spot before you jump?

For many bloggers the change will go completely unnoticed until they discover by chance in three or six months time that they are way behind the curve in terms of facilities available or their site ceases to function after it is hacked because they have not closed security loopholes with the latest upgrades.

There is an element of 'ignorance is bliss' in this approach. At least you can get on producing and publishing decent content to build your blog.  But there are also negatives.

You could be missing out on some decent improvements but, more importantly, the more popular that the WordPress blogging platform becomes the more attractive it becomes for hackers who frequently seem to have little motive other than creating misery for others.  And that is really not worth the risk.

However, upgrading immediately also has it's risks. Any upgrade, no matter how much testing it has been subject to, is the moment when the software is exposed to the great general public who will set about beating the holy c*** out of it as they bend, twist and shake it in ways that the developers never anticipated.

As I understand things there were some 800 or more reported bugs in WP 2.8 until recently that have been cleaned up before this latest release. While recognising the enormous efforts that must have gone into getting that sorted out, as a non technical blogger I really don't want to be spending my time living with the consequences if some of them didn't quite get properly fixed.

The other negative issue is that if you are using a whole batch of plugins from various sources then they all need upgrading as well in order to work with the new version.

Some plugin authors will be on top of the job and have upgraded versions of their plugins ready to go – while others will not. Nor are the programming skills that go into plugins of a uniform standard and you may find conflicts and glitches arising. The more plugins you are using the more potential for trouble exists.

But enough of the miseries. Let's talk about some good stuff.

Two major improvements are included in 2.8. Firstly, WordPress has gone back to being able to drag and drop widgets between different panels all of which are available all the time. This takes it back to an approach abandoned with the last version of 2.7.

Whoever made the decision to abandon the drag and drop approach in the last version I hope they have taken them out the back of the building and shot them. It was a severely retrograde step and getting back to this approach is a great improvement.

Likewise for the ability to use multiple versions of widgets and to be able to access a theme library to view available themes and download from WordPress.org directly into your site is a great improvement. Myself, I find the incredibly flexible Semiologic Reloaded theme is more than enough for my requirements and I never have to worry about what works or not – it all works.

So do you upgrade now or not?

The conservative approach!

My main reason for using WordPress is because I want to be able to get on with my marketing and not have to worry about building and maintaining websites.

So if I can reduce the risk of having to fix things that break then that matches my objectives. The simplest thing to do is simply wait a few weeks. This will give the enthusiastic lemmings the chance to find every possible way to break the software and the techies as WordPress the chance and time to fix it.

Similarly, the plugin authors will also have the time to get up to speed and make sure that the plugins you are using are properly upgraded.

At the end of the day it comes down to the same thing as most business decisions. It is not about what is technically better or preferable or has more bells and whistles, it is about managing the risks in your business.

Just hang on a few weeks. By then the dust will have settled and you have a much better chance of a painless upgrade – the way it should be.

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