Wordpress 2.1 Release Candidate 1

The guys at Wordpress have just put out version 2.1 RC1 of their blogging software. Apparently, it’s chock full of great new bits and pieces, bells and whistles, and whizzes and bangs. But, I won’t be installing it just yet. Why? Because in a blurb from WP’s Ryan Boren says specifically “Caveat Emptor“, which as it’s free software isn’t quite appropriate, but you get the gist.

Apparently, once upgraded to version 2.1 you cannot revert a site to to a version 2.0.x unless you’ve made a full database backup. So, if it turns out half your plugins don’t work (there’s a compatibility list, here, although I’d like to see an incompatibility list, myself) with version 2.1 and you want to jump ship, you’re stuck if you didn’t back up.

You should be backing up your WP database regularly anyway, why aren’t you? Here’s the plugin to make the job so much easier (works with 2.0.x)

Anyway, regardless of plugins and backups, there’s another reason not to upgrade, especially if you’ve just applied the 2.0.6 (and patch) then the 2.0.7 upgrades that close various security loopholes. Wordpress says that it’s already working on version 2.2 and is changing its update policy to timed releases that will appear every four months, say, instead of launching major upgrades just once a year. This means that we’re all going to put on a regular, but smaller, upgrade cycle as of version 2.2. So, unless there’s some big reason to jump into 2.1, I’d stick with version 2.0.7 and watch out for Wordpress 2.0.8 in the meantime.