Enjoying WP 2.3 RC 1 on Sumilang

Last Tuesday, out of utter boredom and the need of upgrading my Filipino punditry blog Sumilang to WP 2.2.3 and adding a new post it to boot, I decided instead to brave the waters and upgrade it to WordPress 2.3 Release Candidate 1.

I figured that it would be an excellent opportunity to test the new major version of WordPress, get adjusted to using it and ultimately prepare myself for the big upgrade of The Four-eyed Journal once the full version WordPress 2.3 comes out this monday September 24, 2007.

Sure I have a demo blog, which is the place where I mess around with WordPress themes, plugins and stuff, but a mixure of “experience is the best teacher” and the idea of reality-based tv prompted me to use Sumilang to try out WP 2.3 since it is a fully working blog with real content instead of those “lorem ipsum” texts and it has a considerable amount of organic traffic.

So right now, Sumilang is being run by WordPress 2.3 RC1, and smoothly if I may add. The cool new features of WP 2.3 are just awesome. Enjoyable and so useful is the Upgrade Notification feature wherein WordPress can alert you when a new version of WordPress is available as well as new versions of the plugins you currently use. Then of course there’s the built-in tagging functionality which by far is smoothly running and it simply works. It eliminates the need for complicated setup and configuration so typical of most tagging plugin currently available today. And one of these plugins, is the popular Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin by Christine Davis.

In an earlier post, I shared a list of the core plugins that I use here on The Four-eyed Journal that I also implemented on the demo blog and Sumilang which so far, have been working fine with WordPress 2.3. All except Ultimate Tag Warrior which I dropped in favor of a new tagging plugin which takes advantage or more accurately, extends the built-in tagging functionality of WordPress 2.3. That new plugin is Advanced Tag Entry by Jennifer Hodgdon of Poplar ProductivityWare.

Goodbye UTW?

I’m still wrestling with this decision because though there may be plugin authors who are quick to adopt to the built-in tagging system of WP 2.3, good old plugins like UTW will most likely be upgraded to work with the new major version as well.

So it will boil down to the blogger considering the pros and cons of using either plugin. And again the following options:

Dropping UTW

This would seem to be the most convenient solution for the following gains:

• One less plugin to lighten up your WP install
• One less plugin to worry about every time you upgrade WordPress
• One less plugin to mess up your WP DBase once it gets hay-wired
• One less plugin to worry about everytime you switch themes
• One less plugin to possibly mess around with the other plugins

Not dropping UTW

If you do decide to stick with UTW or any other tagging plugin it means:

• The complete opposite of the points raised above
• You have to edit your UTW plugin file (which is quite easy to do)
• You minimize the risk of your blog being screwed up by WP 2.2 bugs
• Your relationship, a healthy one at most, would stay on with your tagging plugin

However the question still stands, would I drop the UTW plugin and replace it with the new-generation ones or not? I can’t say right now, but I’ll be sure to blog about it whenever teh decision is finally made and most likely, after I have upgraded this blog to WordPress 2.3 but for now, blogging over at Sumilang is enjoyable all thanks to WordPress 2.3

Anyone else facing the same dilemmas?

Tags: plugins, tagging, upgrades, WordPress