WordPress 2.3 is available

Wordpress blogging platform version 2.3 was released

Just in case you haven't been keeping up with the news in your WordPress dashboard, WordPress 2.3 has been available since Monday evening.

Wordpress 2.3 has many benefits for blog owners to make upgrading worthwhile, but you should wait a few more days before upgrading to give plugin makers a chance to test and fix their plugins to work with this new version. Only the Plugins that use  Tags and Categories should be affected.

Changes in WordPress 2.3

• Wordpress 2.3 now supports tagging. Tags are like keywords that can be used in a tag cloud. Wordpress 2.3 can import tag information from: Ultimate Tag Warrior, Jerome's Keywords, Simple Tags, and Bunny's Technorati Tag


• Wordpress 2.3 now has better canonical URL support.  It can fix www vs no www issues and keep links working after a 'page slug' changes.  A page slug is the URL info for the post or page its self. When you type a post, WordPress automatically makes a page slug with the same title and hyphens between words. If you change the title, no problem. Change the slug and links break.


• Wordpress 2.3's Pending review feature makes guest blogging easier by sending the admin an authors posts separately instead of mixing the post in with drafts like before.


• Improved TinyMCE visual editor support


• Wordpress 2.3 now includes update notification.  As long as a plug in is listed in the official Wordpress plugin directory, Wordpress admin will let you know when a plugin is out of date. It will also let you know when a new version of Wordpress is available


• Multiple Category widgets - This must be foreward thinking since there are currently no options to display categories differently. Perhaps a plugin writer could use this function.


• Simple tag cloud - Using the tagging feature. There are very few options. Look for plugins to improve this feature.

I've been checking the plugins directory and I've been seeing that MANY plugins have been updated for 2.3 and some have been posted and reposted to fix new bugs, so don't be surprised!