If you haven’t upgraded your WordPress installations this week, here’s a reminder that a new stable version has recently been released. The last time a new release came out, many people who delayed in performing the upgrade got hacked a short while later, so there’s no reason to wait it out!
As long as you’re using a fairly recent version of WordPress, you can use the automatic update feature from your dashboard. Its the quickest and easiest way to upgrade any CMS platform (that I’m aware of) and there’s really no excuse good enough to justify a quick backup and two or three clicks.
Without naming any specific vulnerabilities, the release notes focus on the security features of the latest version. I don’t dig too deep in to the coding myself, so I’m glad to know that someone out there is 😉
The major difference I’ve been able to notice is how WordPress 2.8.5 actually fixes an issue regarding multiple trackbacks. The prior release wouldn’t automatically ping trackbacks after the first one in a post, and while it was probably great for frustrating trackback spammers, it became annoying when I wanted to add trackbacked links to my own content. Yeah, I like to have new posts piggyback on the link juice of old ones, and the new version finally lets me accomplish that without manually pinging myself two or three different times.
All in all, the update doesn’t change too much about how you’ll actually log in and use WordPress. If you ask me, that’s good news because I’m just starting to get used to the most recent layout. I kind of still miss the 2.7 look, but I’m willing to forgive them if they don’t mess with the one I’m used to now.
Really though, what are you waiting for? You could have upgraded a half dozen blogs in the time you made it this far down the page. Your sites will be more secure and they’ll even work a little better, too. If you find any problems of plugin incompatibilities, be sure to let us know in the comments!
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