The WordPress dashboard is flashing a message that version 2.3 “Dexter” is now available for download. This is a brand new release with a ton of new features. This release includes native tagging support, plugin update notification, URL handling improvements, and much more. This release is named for the great tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon. Some of the cool new features include:
1. Native tagging support allows you to use tags in addition to categories on your post, if you so choose. We’ve included importers for the Ultimate Tag Warrior, Jerome’s Keywords, Simple Tags, and Bunny’s Technorati Tag plugins so if you’ve already been using a tagging plugin you can bring your data into the new system. The tagging system is also wicked-fast, so your host won’t mind.
2. Our new update notification lets you know when there is a new release of WordPress or when any of the plugins you use has an update available. It works by sending your blog URL, plugins, and version information to our new api.wordpress.org service which then compares it to the plugin database and tells you what the latest and greatest is you can use.
3. We’ve cleaned up URLs a bunch in a feature we call canonical URLs which does things like enforce your no-www preference, redirect posts with changed slugs so a link never goes bad, redirect URLs that get cut off in emails on similar to the correct post, and much more. This helps your users, and it also helps your search engine optimization, as search engines like for each page to be available in one canonical location.
4. Our new pending review feature will be great for multi-author blogs. It allows authors to submit a post for review by an editor or administrator, where before they would just have to save a draft and hope someone noticed it.
5. There is new advanced WYSIWYG functionality (we call it the kitchen sink button) that allows you to access some features of TinyMCE that were previously hidden.
I think I will wait for a few bug reports before upgrading. Generally, I find the first new version update always have some issue with the plugins I run. If you made the upgrade to 2.3, I would love to hear how it went.
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As always thanks for the heads up on the update there!
Steve
It’s already in the wp-admin page.
So what?
Most of use don’t even check it and it is nice to have someone to remind us 
You should live life on the edge and use the last nightly build like me
Thanks for the update John! You’re always ahead of everyone.
Sly from Slyvisions.com
I blogged about this yesterday!
I upgraded last night and it seems to be running fine. All my plugins work too.
The only thing I noticed is that all of my incoming links are from my own site and not other sites linking to me. I don’t know if that’s a bug or what?
You mean the technorati links?
I think i will wait to upgrade (even tho I am still on khm version
). Waiting a little longer it will give me time to learn more from the errors of the others. 
yeah I have a similar problem, the majority of the incoming links are from my own site, and the ones that aren’t are really old.
Something is strange with that.
I’m having the same issue. All my incoming links dissappeared and only 5 show from my own site when I first started the blog.
Thats cause they are using google blog search instead of technorati
I have been getting that on Technorati anyway… without upgrading.
Watch out for your TimeZone, if WordPress 2.3 was released today 25 September how come you blogged about it yesterday?
Sounds like a pretty big bug. I wonder if they test these releases before sending them out
JC is right in holding off upgrading!!
the problem is I think, that they test it on their own machines, and I bet those blogs do not have any links on technorati so they do not spot these problems before it hits the users.
But anyway there had to be at least some blogs testing the beta, didn’t they pick this up then?
Its not really a bug, I submitted a ticket on saturday that google blog search was showing your own blog posts as incoming links but the reason you are getting less links showing is because they arent using technorati anymore.
ow really, didn’t know about this.
So is it entirely google based now?
I mean it should at least spot the trackbacks in the comments and list them as well.
LOL!!! Always ahead of everyone? Just because he see’s that wordpress updated and copied and paste some text he’s instantly the leader of the wordpress brigade!
lololol
Thanks for the heads up John. Yeah, I don’t think its time right now to upgrade.
I’m going to be waiting for a bit so that they can work out bugs as well
Simple guide before upgrading
seriously wordpress has a 3 sentence instruction, copy the new files, over write all. visit /wp-admin/upgrade.php and you’re done…
Remember to backup! Last time I had a Wordpress upgrade, all my posts were deleted…
Ouch!
You never think it will happen to you until it happens, better safe than sorry
that was really strange, did it delete the old tables?
You had to have a really old version before upgrading or something.
I love Wordpress! They are the best. Really if you know any better please tell. I think no one will reply because they can’t think of any!
I’m going to try out the new version.
Thanks John for posting about this. Oh…and…I’d like if John could publish more posts…
There are so many posts on Wordpress 2.3 already. If you want posts from John, the archives are always open…
I have used 2.3, and I have also make a WordPress Theme myself.
You can see this blog: http://www.ifgogo.com
It’s a blog in English with Chinese authors.
i made the upgrade this morning and everything seems fine but it has only been a few hours.
Thanks for the news Mr. Chow
Monetizer is still on Blogspot, which you probably will say is a bad idea…one day I’ll make the switch because Wordpress seems to be quite powerful with the plug ins..
Blogger isn’t a bad idea – using the .blogspot.com domain is. Blogger support hosting your domain domain, whereas if you move from a .blogspot.com domain you’ll lose all your search engine placements and pagerank
BlogEngine.net is really cool (I use it for my blog) and is taking off in a big way. Requires .NET hosting though (which all the real programmers have
)!
I will check this blogengine.net thing. thanks
Awesome, I’ll try installing it tonight (I like to do updates at night – less chance of a user seeing my downed-blog)
What about those people on the other side of the globe? It will be day time for them but nigh time for you!
Maybe he made this decision based on where most of his visitors come from…
I installed release candidate 1 the other day. I had a major error but it was due to the new version clashing with the google maps plugin I had.
other than that everything seems fine
Google Sitemap plugin will need to be upgraded to a newer version as well to make it compatible with the new 2.3
no problem so far. except that I have to disable some plugins that I use before. like Ultimate tag warrior
If you go to the import section under the manage tab you can migrate all of your tags and then remove the UTW plugin
I like new versions:). I will install it to all my blogs soon
Still using 2.0.X
I think I’ll upgrade when they release WP 3.0
Sounds like 3.1 might be a better choice the problems people have reported with this version
That will be a huge gap for me. It will have more risks of your site going down…. Right?
I’ve just upgraded my blog this morning. I’ve also upgraded some plugins to get them work with the new version. One plugin that didn’t work with it, is tge DD Sitemap. The author of the plugin has to release a new version so we could use it,
Is it just me, or the are releasing new versions by the hour ?
Somewhat… They’ve upped the release schedule a lot…
Still not near as much as what Firefox did a year and some ago. It was annoying as hell… phpbb use to do that a lot as well. It’s great that they fixed bugs that fast and what not, but when they start adding in new features and no security features it really is pointless.
On the other hand, I like WordPress 2.3, seems to run a lot smoother than 2.2.
Hmmm…. sounds like my company!
Installed the 2.3 update right away on three sites. The first two updated without a hitch. Unfortunately, my main (personal site) experienced some major issues. The upgrade converts your categories table to be compatible with the newly introduced WordPress tags. In the process, my table was somehow mangled and the site threw out all sorts of db issues. The resolution was to extract my posts and comments data and re-import into a new database for a fresh install. Upside – fresh, snappy, install of WordPress 2.3. Downside – I had to re-create categories and re-tag posts.
I’m going to hold off as well. Always better to wait a few months in regard to software releases.
I am not a fan Wordpress, I have been using Movable Type for years now and the new 4 version really kicks ass in my opinion!
Not all people know about Movable Type. Only some and most people just stick with what others use.
I made the upgrade. Honestly I don’t see much of a difference. I’ve been trying out the tags feature, but don’t really understand the point. It’s basically just a simple way for visitors to do a search on your site for related info… (which is OK). It just sucks if you haven’t been tagging before.
The rest of the updates just made it so I don’t have to use as many plugins, which is good. I haven’t had any problems at all. Everything went on clean.
what do you mean so that you dont have to use many plugins?
Just that several of the plugins I used are now obsolete since they were added into the default configuration of WordPress. Such as jQuery, the already mentioned tags, WordPress backup, etc.
Will be upgrading tomorrow
I just started a new wordpress blog two days ago and now I have to upgrade it already?
You should have waited. And yes, upgrade now!
You don’t *have* to. But you won’t get the new bugs unless you upgrade
LOL that’s so true. You need the new bugs !
well look at the bright side, since you have a new blog you won’t have too many problems upgrading (and you don’t risk losing much info if anything goes wrong- you should still backup though)
i like some of the new features but i am afraid to upgrade due to all of the plugins i use.
What you could do is install WordPress on a subdomain on your web site (copy the database to a new database) and test it there before upgrading your live site. You can even install WordPress on your computer if your comfortable with setting up a web server, PHP, and MySQL (Zend Core takes care of all this for you easily).
What often do is I try_it_out on my local server, naturally using Apache, MySql and Php. On the net you could find some pre-configured packages of this magnificent three.
When I installed the WordPress 2.3, everything seemed fine until I tried posting an article with Windows Live Writer. I got a message that it couldn’t connect to the blog. So then I tried logging into my blog and writing the post in WordPress, but it would save the article. I found that the Related Posts plugin I’m using doesn’t not work with WP2.3 The website for the plugin is no longer active, so there is no change of upgrading it work with 2.3. Even after deactivating the plugin, I couldn’t get my site to display properly.
This leads me to a complaint with open source software. Yes, its free, but its free with no user support. If you have questions, you need to post messages in public forums and hopefully someone responds with a solution. I had a customer who I did a migration of his Joomla site from one server to another and several problems occurred. It took a while to get the answers from forums.
Is this a sensible way to run a business? I would rather pay for software and if something goes wrong, contact the developer and get the problem resolved. Open source is free, but you pay for it later.
Oops … I made a typo. The sentence in the 1st paragraph should read:
So then I tried logging into my blog and writing the post in WordPress, but it wouldn’t save the article.
You have to ignore the numerous grammar mistakes in my post. This is what happens when you get 4 hours of sleep.
And it also happens when you write quite a long comment!
Thanks for the news John
I upgraded to 2.3 today at http://www.netevolution.co.uk/blog/ today with no problems, I use lots of the most common plugins.
Just had to do my wp-login fix so I could login to my IIS hosted blog behind the crappy firewall at work. But thats just a quick code replacement
Spanish version available here
I upgraded from 2.3rc to 2.3 and now For some reason All my text on th index is BOLDED so I dont know whats up.
Okay, I fixed it, the bug was caused by placing a more tag directly after a bold tag in a post
thanks for the update, but i’ll wait for more feedback before upgrading my blog
thanks for the update!
Will be upgrading soon
The Google Sitemaps plugin no longer works.
Is anybody else experiencing this? I use that plug-in and don’t want to break stuff.
Frankly I will wait, Im new at this and dont want to risk ruining what I have, but soon Ill take the plunge
http://makingsalesmakingmoney.com/blog/
Even me , will be upgrading soon
This is off-topic but just to let you know that Blog Rush Flavours is up and running
, read it here – http://techcentreme.blogspot.com/2007/09/blog-rush-flavours-and-updates.html
[...] Till now no one can solve this out, even alexking.org?
Wow, but we still have a good trick as my senior Cosa said that you can use default theme as your desired theme, copy all directories and rename as default, select the default and boom… no more hurt with wp 2.2.2 and 2.2.3.
My blog using 2.2.2 and use the plugins of Global Translator still fine, but when I using the wp 2.2.3 and my global translator have issue that the permalink 2 word infront missing, eg http://jayabrahamonlinebook.com/blog/ja/jay-abraham-and-his-meteoric-career-in-marketing/index.php flag link becomes http://jayabrahamonlinebook.com/blog/ja/y-abraham-and-his-meteoric-career-in-marketing/index.php very weird? [...]
Don’t get rush, don’t upgrade till the master upgraded already…
include your plugins!
I cannot upgrade from my hosting server although I ticked the automatic upgrade button and followed onscreen instructions….
I like the last paragraph. I shall await your final judgment before deciding. Thanks any way. Shall ask around if any other opinions are available too and if I come across anything interesting, shall post it.
This time, MyAvatars 0.2 works! No fuss on the plugins but there are claims that the 2.3 spies on people!
I get some shitty errors while posting, sql and php errors, that it couldn’t be saved, a table can’t be found etc.
Yet the post is saved and displayed correctly, the same thing happens while trying to post a comment, sucks a lot, I do not know why this is happening some buggy thing.
alright finally sorted this problem out.
The problems:
Old tag plugin: Delete the table it had det up, deactivate + delete.
Google XML Site map: Delete old files, download version 3.0 and upload.
The errors are now all gone.
Finally!!! WP2.3 here I come… Another lost weekend
// Sleeping Dude
// How to Wake Up Early
I’m will upgrade to this version when its available in my fantasico.
Once fantasico has updated the plugin to 2.3, I will upgrade it.
I have WWW disabled and .. Tag is what i like most
I have installed WP 2.3, but quicktags are not working well.