Upgrade to WordPress 3.0

23. Jun, 2010 View Comments

After some suspenseful moments and some heated self-talk, I took the plunge and upgraded all of my blogs to WordPress 3.0 this week. Being a tech guy, and of course as any regular Internet surfer will understand, upgrades can sometimes cause some horrible teeth-gnashing and bald spots from yanking the hair out of one’s own head.

WordPress has quite possibly the most attractive upgrade process via the single click of a link, however, it’s not as simple as that. With any product release, there are changes made to both the look and feel of how that product works, but the most sinister process is the behind the scenes operation.

What do you think is the most important part of your blog? The design? How about the widgets and links? Maybe the post images?

I beg you to think again…the most important foundational aspect of your blog, is the underlying database that stores virtually everything that is needed for your blog to even breathe. Unfortunately, (and not that I’ve personally seen this, but I know it happens) folks all too easily forget about the back-end world of blogging. Out of sight, out of mind.

That being said, after all of the pre-upgrade steps have been performed including backing up your database, the upgrade process takes less than ten seconds. The main changes that I noticed were, oddly enough, the changing of the admin section header to a lighter shade. Granted, I use Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu plug-in, so my admin area may look a bit different than yours, but some of the menus icons have been redone and there are also a few additions added in, such as:

Dashboard>Updates – If there are any plug-ins or WP updates in queue, they will be sitting here, letting you know there is work to be done.

Appearance>Menus – If you want to include a custom nav menu in your header or sidebar, have at it…pretty useful.

There may be a ton of other ‘hidden’ gadgets and updates but those are the two main ones that caught my eye immediately after the upgrades. I like the new menus option as it gives you more control over your navigation layout and management and even if your current theme doesn’t necessarily support the new option, there is a widget that you can use that will at least allow you to use the option in your sidebar if so desired.

Overall, the upgrade was pretty painless for all of my blogs. There were a couple of plug-ins that needed to be reinstalled or reconfigured, but not anything that would prevent me from not suggesting that the upgrade be avoided, yet…anyway.