WordPress 3.3 is more user-friendly than WordPress 3.2. It helps new users get started with it quickly. The new welcome page is pretty useful if you are new to this platform and want to get started as quickly as possible. This page provides new users with a crash course on what WordPress 3.3 has to offer.

WordPress 3.3 has a lot to offer to experienced users. You now get a multimedia tab which you can drag and drop your media files in. Uploading files in this version has become much easier. Webmasters also get a more polished toolbar. The design in general is more responsive than ever. The fly-out menu effects are pretty cool.

WordPress 3.3 has a Tumblr Importer tool that makes bringing your content from that network to your site easier. Your widgets won’t get lost when you change your themes which is useful. Webmasters can now handle permalinks with less performance penalty. WordPress 3.3 is optimized for co-editing as it releases post locks immediately.

What To Do Before Upgrading

Like you, I prefer updating my sites to the latest version of WordPress as soon as possible. You want to make sure you:

1. check requirements for WordPress 3.3 to make sure your server is compatible with it.
2. have created a backup of your database and important files before upgrading.
3. check with your theme provider (if premium) to see if an update for WordPress 3.3 is available.
4. update your plugins to their latest versions before upgrading (or disable them entirely just to be on the safe side).
5. check your website after the installation process is complete to make sure nothing is broken.

WordPress 3.3 is even more elegant than before and seems quite exciting. We will be covering the ins and outs of it in details in the near future.

What do you like the most about WordPress 3.3?

A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen.

Removal of areas within the code where php code in variables was evaluated.

Switched the file upload functionality to be whitelisted for all users including Admins.

Retiring of the two importers of Tag data from old plugins.

Download your copy from WordPress.org or just update from your admin dashboard.

In case you missed it, WordPress 2.8 was released a few days ago and generated a lot of good and bad buzz on the Internet. WordPress 2.8 is another decent upgrade that brings you better theme, plugin, and content management capabilities. But I for one can tell you that it hasn’t been the easiest WordPress to upgrade to. There are a lot of incompatible plugins out there, and that could easily lead to your install breaking if you don’t deactivate these plugins before performing your upgrade. If your plugin is not on WordPress 2.8 compatibility list, there is a chance it may not be compatible with WordPress 2.8. If that’s the case, you need to deactivate it before installing WordPress 2.8. The best way to go about doing is by deactivating all your plugins and activating them one by one to figure out which one’s not compatible. The same process applies to your themes as well.

WordPress 2.8 New Features:

Theme Management:

WordPress 2.8 now comes with everything you need to manage your themes more effectively.

WordPress 2.7 introduced us to better plugin management capability in WordPress back-end. WordPress 2.8 now allows you to browse and manage your themes more effectively. You can use this new feature to find new themes and install them on your blog with a click of a button. What I love about this feature is that you can upload your themes too. That comes handy if you own a premium theme. The theme preview feature has also been improved to make it easier to preview all kinds of themes without you needing to activate them first.

Permalink Management:

Not a big change but you can now easily change your permalink structure from your post page. You can also view your post live with a click of a button.

Coding:

If you are into coding or just want to go through your plugins’ or themes’ code, you are in luck. The new WP 2.8 makes it even easier to go through others’ codes and find out possible errors.

The addition of color coding and function look up is a big plus.

Tag Management:

Tags are now officially categories. At least that’s the way it seems with the new tag management feature in WordPress 2.8. If you have a huge website, you are going to need to manage your tags properly. With the new changes in WP 2.8, it’s all that much easier.

Widget Management:

WordPress 2.8 has gotten a whole new look and feel in the widget management area. Now you can easily add and manage your widgets in the back-end

Improved Screen Options:

The new version now comes with more options to let you manage your screen. This feature allows you to better manage your posts and blog more effectively.

Comment Management:
WordPress 2.8 now makes it easier to manage your comments from your edit page. You can easily delete or approve comments from your edit page. It’s not earth shattering but does save time.

Should you Upgrade to WordPress 2.8

I would usually say yes. But there are a lot of themes and plugins that are not compatible with WordPress 2.8. If your premium theme is not compatible with WordPress 2.8, you can always ask the designer to make the necessary changes. You can’t expect the same with plugins and free themes however. If you can find alternative themes and plugins to replace your incompatible scripts, there is no reason you shouldn’t move to WordPress 2.8.

Your take: how’s been your experience with WordPress 2.8?

I had heard about all the issues with TinyMCE’s glitches when it comes to working with WordPress. But I had never personally experienced any glitches with it until I upgraded WordPress Jedi to WordPress 2.6.2. What happend was that TinyMCE’s HTML tab became disabled. It pretty much crippled me as I write code in Microsoft Expression and put it on WordPress. So let me tell you it’s not a pleasant thing to deal with, especially if you are late for work.

But the solution is not that hard really. It’s often a cache file that break things with TinyMCE. I found that there was a file in my content folder, under upload folder, inside the JS_cash called tiny MCE. Now it’s usually there on all my blogs, but if you remove it, it solves the issue with TinyMCE. I know that some of my friends have fixed their issues by doing a clean re-intall but I certainly don’t recommend that. So there you have it. A tiny thing like that can really cripple you and your blogging performance.

WordPress 2.6.1 has been released and over 60 bugs have been fixed. The focus for this release is to make some minor fixes for Farsi and Hebrew blogs. Also some IE7 glitches have been taken care of as well. My favorite fix is the one that takes care of the HTML issues in feed. I run multiple blogs and I have always wondered why the RSS feed breaks with some feeds. I never actually thoroughly checked the widget.php file, but I always knew it would be a really small fix. Read the rest of 60 fixes here.