John Hendow

Today WordPress announced the released of v2.7 “Coltrane”. It looks like a major step forward for the blogging engine, but I’m going to stick with v2.6.5 for another month. Last time I “early adopted” a release was v2.5 and it caused me some serious headaches. Those of us who installed the update on day 1 discovered a number of bugs that required multiple point-update patches to resolve. The whole experience amounted to an unplanned scramble to put our sites back into working order. All that being said, it looks like they’ve incorporated some attractive new features into this version of the engine, and I appreciate the WordPress crew for accomplishing two major revisions of the code base in 2008. It’s a great tool and I continue to enjoy it.

I’m especially intrigued by the statement:
“…this may be the last time you ever have to manually upgrade WordPress again. We heard how tired you were of doing upgrades for yourself and your friends, so now WordPress includes a built-in upgrade that will automatically notify you of new releases, and when you’re ready it will download them, install them, and upgrade your blog with a single click.”
Yes indeed! The current site update process involves the careful deletion of certain files within the site folders, copying new files/folders onto the server, and hoping it worked. Building an automated updating system is big improvement and I’ll look forward to having it in place… that is… when I install this major update in a month or so…