WordPress 2.3 was released Monday 24th September, bringing major advances to the engine that powers many millions of blogs. Slated as a release candidate, this version has been thoroughly tested and is by now featured as the newest stable download.
This release isn’t just an incremental update with security patches, it includes a host of new features such as native tags, core and plugin update notifications, enhanced entry management and improved handling of recruit entries, native support for canonical redirection, atom feeds, and a bunch of other updates too numerous to mention here.Tagging Your Posts
With the explosion of sites using tags to search for content, Technorati and Flickr being two obvious examples, it was only ever a topic of time until WordPress joined the club. Version 2.3 sees the first implementation of tags by the development team, even if in right WP style, they tell us they haven’t implemented tag management yet, so no editing or deleting, they want to assess the need for this previous to committing extra code to the base.
Inexperienced users might moan about this, but one of the strengths of WordPress is the range of plugins available, and several tag plugins by now exist, it won’t be long until v2.3 management of tags is accomplished. The plugin route may be preferred by many users anyhow given the range of customization options that are a typical feature of third party plugins. The tag functionality built into 2.3 works well, tags are showed along with the entry and clicking the tag link displays all entries with the same tag.
Webmasters with existing tags using ‘Simple Tagging’, ‘Jerome’s Keywords’, ‘Bunny’s Technorati Tags’, or ‘Ultimate Tag Warrior’ are able to exchange their tags to v2.3 using the Import function found under the Manage tab in Dashboard. Converting your existing WordPress categories to tags is also possible for user’s who want to remove categories altogether.Update Notification in Dashboard
A significant addition to v2.3 is the core and plugin update notifications that have been added to the Dashboard. Long overdue, this feature, not without controversy over privacy issues, is likely to become the main selling feature of WordPress 2.3 as users realize they no longer have to search for plugin homepages or newest versions to ensure their installation is uptodate.
Here’s how it works. WordPress is configured to involuntarily contact the WordPress servers, api.wordpress.org and query for updates to core files or plugins registered in the WP plugins repository hosted on wordpress.org. When new updates are available, these will be showed in Dashboard with a direct link to the files or download page. A notable absence is the ability to involuntarily install the update, even if rumors proliferate this may be included in future versions.
A criticism of the update notification service has been leveled at the ‘permanently on’ nature of the feature. Privacy and potential hacking scenarios have been raised, along with question for that the service be patched to allow an opt in/opt out mode. It will be appealing to see how the developers deal with this issue in future releases given their rationale that it is better to reduce the volume of support queries and insecure installations by providing the notification service.Enhanced Post Filtering and Improved Recruit Entry Management
This is a welcome addition for any blogger with more than a handful of posts. WordPress aficionados should immediately notice the enhanced filters in the manage posts page. Posts are now filterable by status, month and category making it much simpler to find specific posts to edit.
The status dropdown is particularly welcome with options for selecting in print, recruit, scheduled, or pending review. Managing unpublished entries has never been simpler in WordPress.Native Canonical Redirection
Any WordPress webmaster familiar with the duplicate content penalty arising from www or no www, will be delighted with v2.3’s native support for canonical redirection. Simply enable this from within wp-admin, under Options to experience seemless redirection, most users will never even know that they’ve been redirected unless they look at the address bar. This should make it simpler to footstep SERPs on WordPress powered sites.