Shaun Low

If you’ve been following the developments on the WordPress blog, you’d know that the new official release of WordPress 2.5 is out.

Besides better image handling - the new version has a pretty comprehensive built-in gallery (WordPress head developer honcho Matt Mullenweg did a preview screencast of the new gallery), it also has features like an enhanced in-built tagging feature, integrated analytics (so you get a better idea of your traffic picture without having to go to Google Analytics), a redesign of the user interface that should allow for more intuitive posting.

What’s uncertain is if embedding videos and other code requires having to muck around with the blog settings, because WordPress hasn’t really “played nice” with PHP, javascript and flash files in it’s previous incarnations.

Also, there’s a big question mark about the compatibility with WordPress plugins (generally developed by third party and independent developers) designed for earlier versions of WordPress.

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So the $64,000 question (or perhaps in today’s context, the $1million question…) is as an Internet Marketer - either you promote other products as an affiliate or you have your own products - should you upgrade to WordPress 2.5 now?

Here’s my personal take…

If you started out with the later versions of WordPress 2.2.x or WordPress 2.3.x and your blog works ok now, you should not have too much difficulty with the upgrade. Maybe 1 or 2 plugins might stop working, but you might be able to get along without it.

If on the other hand, you started out with WordPress 2.0.x or 2.1.x and you use more than 20 different plugins, you can expect some pain during the upgrade process.

I know specifically if you’re using SEO-optimization type plugins and affiliate marketing plugins, and one of them breaks in the process (especially since WordPress has gone from a category-based data management system to a taxonomy-based one), you might want to hang on for a moment, and wait a couple of weeks before the dust settles.

From what I’ve seen from the notes, it doesn’t look like the ability to post video on the blog is a huge priority at the moment, so podcasters, video bloggers and lifecasters might experience some difficulty during the migration.

Whatever you choose to do, be sure to backup your MySQL database, and copy and paste important settings and information into a text file for reference later in case something goes awry.

There’s nothing more “fun” than doing a one-click upgrade of your blog, only to spend the next 24-48 hours trying to undo it.

If you have the ability to, you might even want to duplicate your existing blog on another domain or a sub-directory and upgrading that instance of your blog. The major bugbears may take a couple of days to show themselves though.

Whatever you do, tread carefully, especially if your blog brings in daily income!

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About the author:
Andrew Wee is an Asia-based Internet Marketer focused on blogging, social traffic generation and affiliate marketing. Previously rated as one of Asia’s top technology journalists, Andrew covers breaking news and industry developments at WhoIsAndrewWee.com

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 3:05 pm and is filed under The Net. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.