WordPress 2.1 has been released.
Some of the new features may be attractive but, as usual, you should check that plugins etc., are compatible before upgrading.
A plugin compatibility checklist is available as part of the documentation project.
According to the documentation most of the more popular plugins will work fine.
So what’s new?
- Autosave – handy if you’re writing longer posts directly on the web interface and don’t save your work.
- Database improvements – this should be interesting to see in a shared environment, though most of the issues people encounter stem from badly written plugins that use inefficient SQL. Do you really need over 100 queries to generate a page? 🙂
- Lots of AJAX – hopefully this brings improvement and not just feature creep
- Pseudo-cron – sounds like they’ve brought the plugin into the core
They’ve also decided to put a development plan in place:
More exciting for most of our users, though, is our new development cycle. Based on everything we’ve learned in the past 3 years of doing WordPress, we’ve decided to shift to a more frequent release schedule like Ubuntu, with major releases coming several times a year. So, for the first time in WordPress’ history, I have an answer to when the next version is coming out: April 23rd.
So, should you upgrade?
As this release is not a security fix there’s probably no reason for you to upgrade unless you actually want to.
If you have a working setup that you are happy with, why would you want to break it?
I will probably upgrade when I get the time, but I’m in no rush.
