WordPress 2.3 Scheduled for Release on Monday
September 21st, 2007
With the upcoming release of WordPress 2.3, which is scheduled to be released this Monday September 24, 2007, it looks like a bunch of new features are in store for us.Â
The most popular feature will probably be the new tagging system that will be built into WordPress, but there is a lot more to look forward to.  Technosailor has written a post titled 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.3, which should cover just about everything you need to know. In addition to tagging, the following are in store for us:
- Update notifications – This one is very exciting, because it not only lets you know when a new version of WordPress is available, but it will also notify you when your plugins need updates!
- Canonical Redirection – WordPress will now issue a 301 redirect internally, meaning you won’t need the help of certain plugins, such as my favorite, Permalink Redirect.  Some of these plugins will still remain useful, however, as many do provide additional features such as redirecting feeds to your feedburner feed, or redirecting old URL’s to new ones if you change your permalink structure.
- Improved Work Flow – It looks like WordPress will have improved draft management functionality.  I tend to get posts half written and they clog up my draft area, so this will be useful for me.
- Customizable Dashboard – Now you have a choice of what is displayed on your WordPress dashboard.Â
There are a few other interesting additions, so click here to check out more details about the changes in store for WordPress.Â
I feel like a kid at Christmas, as this is a bunch of great features that I will get a lot of use out of. What feature are you the most excited about?











I’m probably most excited about the canonical redirection – its been a long time coming. It just seemed silly that WordPress itself was so SEO unaware.
The other thing I’m excited about is reports of improved performance, something I haven’t read mentioned much in any of the 2.3 overviews. I originally read it on the WordPress site – any thoughts?
Robert – I hadn’t read anything about improved performance either, but it is more than welcome!
As WordPress continues to grow and gain more features, its natural to worry about it getting bogged down. Therefore, if performance is improved, that is a huge credit to the WordPress team.
Have to wait till monday
Hey Kyle – the performance improvements are in JQuery as per WordPress.org – “Upgrade to “800% times faster” (http://jquery.com/blog/2007/07/01/jquery-113-800-faster-still-20kb/) jQuery (1.1.4), and some parts (http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4576#comment:2) of the WordPress dashboard have been converted to jQuery.” How this impacts actual performance, I’m not sure.
John – Yes, that is a very long wait
Robert – Ahh, that makes sense. Thanks for the heads up!
The JQuery enhancements make a big difference. We’ve been using JQuery for all of our JavaScript work on our site, and the last few versions that they’ve released have made significant speed improvements. There are some stats on their blog about loading times in different browsers:
http://jquery.com/blog/2007/07/01/jquery-113-800-faster-still-20kb/
Kyle,
I can’t wait for the update either. However, I have been reading that it may still have a few bugs with the new release. Are you going to use the new release on this site or do you have a dev domain to test it?
Ryan – Thanks for the link. Those enhancements look very nice!
Joe – I usually wait until the .1 release to upgrade, so at like 2.3.1 probably. My problem is that it looks so sweet that I don’t know that I can wait!