I can guarantee you that when I buy a high-tech gadget or install or upgrade software, the new version will come out immediately. I know developers and manufactures keep an eye on my purchases. The fastest version of WordPress is no exception.
A major version of WordPress was released this week. So now the question is, “should I upgrade my blog to WordPress 3.0?” My answer is usually the same for most technical issues. It depends.
Several factors determine the decision for your particular situation.
- What happens if your blog breaks
- Is your blog your main presence on the Internet?
- Do you have a steady stream of visitors to your blog?
- Will it cause you to lose visitors or sales if your blog is down?
- Is your blog working fine the way it is?
- How many plugins are you using?
- Are you using a lot of plugins?
- Are you using some uncommon plugins?
- Can you contact the developer of your plugins?
- Can you disable some plugins without messing up your site?
- How comfortable are you dealing with technical issues?
- Do you have time to mess with changes to your blog?
- Can you hire someone to update and fix your blog for you?
My general advice is if you have an existing blog that has regular visitors, I’d wait until others have tested the new release and plugin developers have had time to make any needed updates.
If you have a new blog, or a blog you can use for testing, you can go ahead and install the update. That will give you a chance to test out the changes.
Some of the changes include
- Bulk updates
- You can update several things at once.
- 3.0 Puts your blog in Maintenance Mode during the updates
- New default theme
- The default theme 2010 has a customizable header
- Comes with lots of great images
- Can have a different image for each post
- Customizable navigation menus
- Make changes to fit your site and your readers
- Control multiple blogs from one dashboard
These changes look really great. I can’t wait to play around with it. However, I won’t be updating this blog for a bit. I’m starting a new blog (more information about that later), and I’ll play with WordPress 3.0 there first.
That’s my long answer to the question of should I upgrade my blog to WordPress 3.0 right now. I’ll post more information, successes, and war stories here with my experience.
If you’ve upgraded or have decided to wait on the upgrade, leave a comment and share your experience.
Write on,
Lynn
5 Comments to 'Should I Upgrade My Blog To WordPress 3.0?'
June 19, 2010
I love it! LOL your favorite answer and my favorite answer are the same IT DEPENDS!
Thanks for the list of features, I’ve updated my first one and will update the others soon.
June 19, 2010
Hi Kat,
IT DEPENDS was always my first answer when I managed the Computer Support Department at the college and also when I taught computer courses there. I don’t trust anyone who gives you a definite answer for anything without hearing the facts.
June 20, 2010
Come on you tech ludites
Upgrade, full steam ahead!
If you don’t upgrade your computer will stop talking to you.
if you don’t upgrade you will lose all your friends.
if you don’t upgrade you will be so “yesterday”.
if you don’t upgrade everything will break down.
if you don’t upgrade you will break the time space continuum and
you will have to relive all your worst mondays.
if you don’t upgrade you will cause a starving tech support guru in india to lose his job.
if you don’t upgrade …
Who Cares?
I usually wait until something comes along and tells me I can’t use it because my version is so out of date that they can’t tell I even have it.
I’m currently hoping that Windows 95 won’t break so I don’t have to upgrade to windows 7 (what’s up with that number? who trusts such a lonely number? 2010, 2007, 2012, anything but a 7).
Glad you posted this and I should wait until everyone has upgraded so that I can figure out if it is worth staying up till midnight to do it.
Have a great today,
joe
June 20, 2010
Maybe Microsoft got smart and quit using the year for their releases. They kept falling farther behind and really had to struggle to make the release before the year changed.
Just don’t be the first on the block to upgrade.
June 21, 2010
As a I have a bunch of blogs and websites running on WordPress, I usually stay about an upgrade behind because there’s *always* bugs in the new upgrade…although I will try out the newest version on my test installation of WordPress. Another reason why I stay behind because that will also give the plugin and theme folks a chance to catch up. More than once I was burned because an critical plugin I needed didn’t work on the newest version of WordPress.
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