WordPress 2.0.5: Top 5 Reasons to upgade
October 27, 2006
WordPress 2.0.5 includes some 60 bugfixes and improvements that I link to here. That should be reason enough for any geek to switch to the latest version. If you are not a geek, and perhaps you haven’t upgraded even to version 2.0.3 yet. You need to. It is VERY important to the safety of your blog. If you started your blog on version 2.0 or higher, you will also get a marked speed improvement out of your site.
Top 5 Reasons to upgrade
1. Integrity: If you aren’t running version 2.0.4 or higher, there are easy methods to delete posts and comments from your blog that are not traceable back to the person that did it. All your work could be easily if someone got the whim to do so.
2. Speed: If you are running versions 2.0-2.0.4 and always were, than you are missing a key index. This missing index tells your blog where to find posts and pages. As you can guess, it is good for that to work quickly. Read more here in the ticket I logged when I found the issue.
3. Security: Improved security in wp-db-backup plugin. Sneaky people could use older versions of the get to places that they shouldn’t be
4. Privacy: User info snooping was possible. Any user could see any other users contact info, private not. Spammers must love that “feature”.
5. All of the above and much more: You choose…. I’ll leave this one up to you… You might wish to choose from one of Mark Jarquith‘s favorites. He seems to be a pretty good guy and has listed his top choices here. Or you could choose from any of the items listed on the official tracking site, here. That link will list the most important fixes first.
If you’re still not convinced, you should read this article (not yet published).
If you think that it takes too long to upgrade, consider using my Upgrade your sites to the latest WordPress in 35 seconds. method and you’ll never have to worry about a lengthy update again! That’s how I updated The CodeCave.
And “Why is it called Ronan?” you ask… Well, it’s named after the very first WordPress Baby! Ryan Boren is Ronan’s proud father. Pictures are available on Ryan’s site.
Update: Mark has posted a list of just the files that have changed. If you don’t use the script I mentioned above, you could look into his file which gives you a smaller set of files to update. You can find that here: http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/2006/10/28/wordpress-205-upgrade-changed-files-zip-changes-diff-changed-files-list
Update2: IF you are one of the few with the 302/500 error please visit this site:
http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/2006/10/28/some-wordpress-205-users-reporting-server-500-error/
If you have no idea what I am talking about, you are in the VAST majority and can thank your lucky stars 
Comments
8 Responses to “WordPress 2.0.5: Top 5 Reasons to upgade”
Got something to say?
But I’m too afraid. I screwed up the last one and my dashboard still isn’t right. I can’t use the WYSIWYG, not that I do, but sometimes it’s useful. Bleh. I’ll think about it.
That WYSIWYG editor is broked of its own accord, it doesn’t need any of our help to have problems! and talk to me about your dashboard. I think I can help you out. Is it OK when you log into wpadmin but is messed up when you get to it again from somewhere else in admin panel? If that’s it, I got ya covered on that one….
So, ya got your nose bloodied upgrading to 2.0.4 – that doesn’t mean your gonna have the same problem the next upgrade. You can get a bloodied nose climbing into bed, it doesn’t mean you sleep on the couch from then on… right?
hey!
Nice to see a neat list of reasons to upgrade to 2.0.5.
Will link to this from my blog post.
Thanks for the heads-up. After I was buried in work I decided to have a look at your blog again after many weeks – and again there was valuable information for me. Thanks to your fabulous supersonic update script, I moved to 2.0.5 in less than 30 seconds.
Hiya Michael. I was busy for weeks as well. I was swamped at work, watched my sister’s kid for a few days when she and her husband were busy delivering another, help organize a marathon (well a small part of it), started teaching the 70+ crowd sunday school class, and hurried up an rushed around so I could take a small vacation (20 hours of driving round trip). So, as you can guess I’ve been neglecting the blog for a longer than I thought I would. I’m glad you came back AFTER I found some free time again.
Glad the script worked for you. If I can get some time away from clearing leaves today, I should be able to spend an hour and test the code for the new script. It’s much improved. OK Catch ya later! I’ll wander over and check out what’s happening on your side of the fence over the next couple days too. Cheers!
Hey,
upgraded with ease. No problems. Looking forward to 2.1 I got a nightly and tested it locally actually. Looks pretty neat. Couple of bugs I saw I gotta put out on the mailing list.
Hey that’s great news, Anirudh. Yeah, definately provide us with your thoughts on 2.1. It is still very open to change. As Matt says, it’s a proving ground. Some of the stuff is put in there just to see if it works. If it doesn’t, or people can say there’s reasons NOT to do something one way or another, then it gets changed. People providing their thoughts and ideas is how this product grows!
And again, thanks for helping to spread the word on the reasons to update!
Thanks for the information.. Fixed my site with not problems.. Thanks again..