Primarily because of the WordPress plugins that I use, a few inconsistencies have leaped out of the woodwork that needed to be fixed. Here are the issues that I encountered:

Database errors appearing in web pages

This was a momentary discovery along the upgrade trail, entirely caused by the way in which I was doing things. As usual, I went and copied over the WordPress 2.3 files to my web server so I saw these errors before I ran the upgrade script. Then, they were banished, confirming that WordPress 2.3 code was trying to access a WordPress 2.2 type database; 2.3 has made some database changes in order to incorporate tagging.

Dashboard Editor no longer fully functional

The move to JQuery meant that some of the things for which its was looking had changed. They also changed the incoming links provider from Technorati to Google, now that the former is having a tougher time of it. It took a while to track down why I was unable to remove components from the front page of my dashboard as before but a quick comparison of 2.3 code with its 2.2.3 forbear revealed all. I can make a copy of the updated code available for those who need it.

WordPress Admin Themer

The plugin works as before and does its job so well that you end up applying an old stylesheet (in the blog’s theme folder) to the latest release. It only took a spot of tweaking to put everything in order.

I am not complaining about any of these, partly because they were easy to resolve and, in any event, I don’t mind a spot of code cutting. However, I can foresee some users being put out by them, hence my sharing my experiences.

Update: Dashboard Editor has since been updated by the author. Even so, I will stick with my own version of the plugin.

The final release of the next version of WordPress is due out on Monday and, because there are sure to be security fixes included, I have been giving the release candidate a go on my offline blogs. 2.3 is another major release so I have been doing some preparation.  In fact, WordPress have a blog entry dedicated to such things for this release. Thankfully, I think that my hillwalking blog should emerge unscathed by this upgrade; I still need to have a go with an offline version of this blog.

The special feature in the new release is tagging and it is good to see that it has had no impact on legacy set ups. I had the same reservations about 2.2 with its inclusion of sidebar widgets but the backward compatibility was enough to see me through without any hiccups. Tagging is not something that I see myself using with categories fulfilling much the same type of role; I am unconvinced by the idea of tag clouds, the type of thing that it powers. However, there are some useful extras here and the filtering of posts by edit status is one of these. Having pending review as a publishing status sounds like a tweak that I might use to allow myself a cooling off period before I publish a post for all of the world to see. Revisiting something with a fresher pair of eyes might stop typographical howlers from emerging into public view…

Update: Another 2.3 feature discovered! I have picked up on multiple category widgets by virtue of the fact that category styling disappeared with the upgrade of the offline version of this blog to 2.3 RC1. Adding "-1" to the relevant CSS class definitions soon sorted things out. It does support the idea of testing before implementation even if no other unexpected changes were spotted. I still am not sure why anyone would have multiple category listings, though.