Re: WordPress 2.8 Upgrade

Posted by Dr.D | June 13, 2009 .

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I just upgraded all of my WordPress blogs to 2.8 last night. As usual I have a ‘testsite’ that I try everything on first before proceeding to make sure everything works. Also, a good database backup is always in order.

WordPress has a list of plugins that are compatible with the new upgrade and also a supposed list of themes. It would be a miracle if the theme you actually use is on the list in anyway—mine never are which is why I run the new upgrade on a test site first just in case. Here’s an article that I found helpful before I proceeded: “Wordpress 2.8 And 10 Things That You Should Know Before/After You Upgrade”

If you are upgrading from 2.7 or 2.71 you might try out new one-click ‘Automatic Upgrade’ option. It takes less than a minute to complete the whole enchilada. I literally upgraded my 10 blogs in less than a 1/2 hour—quite smooth! Of coarse if you don’t trust the easy option you can always do it the ol’ fashion way.

So far I see only a few differences from 2.71 which was a major upgrade over 2.6. Here’s what WordPress says about the new features in 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.

And Even More

You can read the full list of over 180 new features, changes, upgrades, and improvements on the Codex. The list is exhausting!