Upcoming WordPress 2.3 Upgrade

In a few days, WordPress version 2.3 will be available.

I don't think I'll be rushing to upgrade, because there may be some issues with plugin compatibility. Most likely, I'll wait for the "early adopters" to go ahead. Then we can scan the various forums or blog comments to see how they fared.

Usually, it's easier to rush in and upgrade say, from 2.2.2 to version 2.2.3 (slight changes).

With this latest version, however, we can expect a few major changes. Some of these may make our beloved plugins redundant, and I'm not certain I'm willing to shift this early.

Or perhaps it's time to create straightforward blogs that do not rely on plugins too much, so that whenever WP comes out with a new version, upgrading will be a breeze.

Or if we're gutsy enough (you have been warned!), we can always try updating WordPress with Subversion.

Other WordPress 2.3 Notes:

How To Add WordPress 2.3 Tags To Your Current Theme. With built-in support for tags, you may kiss those tagging plugins goodbye. Or can you?

10 Things You Need To Know About WordPress 2.3. "I will tell you from first hand experience that importing WordPress categories does not associate those tags with entries that previously had the identical category.... WordPress 2.3 brings us a lot of good things. It’s certainly not perfect. I’d personally recommend that everyone wait before rushing right out and upgrading."

WordPress Plugins I Need To Test

Audio Player (Pixelout)
Makes it easy to stream your mp3 files. Another podcasting WP plugin is PodPress.

Optimal Title
Makes your WordPress post titles search engine friendly. But I'm searching for the solution that will do away with this plugin. It involves directly editing the PHP files of your WP theme.

For example, instead of using this Optimal Title plugin-related html:
<title><?php optimal_title('-'); ?><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>

Use this instead (found it in Ardamis.com):

<title><?php wp_title(''); ?><?php if(wp_title(' ', false)) { echo ' | '; } ?><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>

Voila! Optimized titles in WordPress, without having to use the Optimal Title plugin. I wonder why the WordPress developers didn't do this from the start.

UPDATE: You can also make use of Custom Homepage Titles:

<title><? if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"] == "/"){ echo "Insert your homepage title here"; }else{?><?php wp_title(''); ?><?php if(wp_title(' ', false)) { echo ' - '; } ?><?php bloginfo('name'); ?><? } ?></title>

[ First posted on 09/23/2007 by Manuel Viloria ]