Upgrade to WordPress 2.1?

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So WordPress 2.1 came out 17 days ago, and, as with any upgrade, the question is whether to apply it, and if so when. If you’re hosting your own WordPress installation and are in that boat, I’m happy to be your guinea pig

I upgraded about 30 minutes ago. Just backed up everything, deleted everything from the server, and then uploaded all the new files. Easy as pie; just took a little time to upload everything. And so far, so good. I’ve only had two minor problems so far.

First, the custom link display code on this page gave me a MySQL error after the upgrade. I just changed the section to use a different method for displaying the links, though, and it works fine now.

The second issue was an obscure one. In my previous post about whether StumbleUpon is a scam, I had a couple of emoticons that were inside parentheses (e.g. ). In WP 2.0.7, it converted them just fine. 2.1 treated them differently, though, and seemed to get confused when the emoticon was the last thing in parens. For instance, you won’t see this as an emoticon: :))

The best thing I’ve run into so far is the incredible upgrade in speed. There is an extraordinary difference in the WP admin interface between 2.0.7 and 2.1. Very, very noticeable difference.

The other nice thing is the autosave in the editing interface. No more losing a post that you’ve been working on for hours.

There are tons of other features and more than 500 big fixes, so it’s definitely a nice upgrade. If you’re happy with 2.0.7, though, I don’t know that I wouldn’t wait another week or two just to make sure everything’s kosher. From my perspective, I definitely don’t see any reason to rush in. There seem to be very few must-have features or bug fixes, and really none for me personally. Of course, my opinion may change as I continue to use it.

I’ll keep you posted!

Update:
Great post from Lorelle that pretty much covers everything you need to know about upgrading to WP 2.1.

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