On Monday, September 24, 2007, WordPress 2.3 was released. For information on the changes and improvements in this new version, see Changelog for 2.3.
For Version 2.2, the database version (db_version in wp_options) is 6124.
See WordPress 2.3 Theme Compatibility and Plugin Compatibility to confirm the theme and plugins you’re using are compatible. There is also Wordpress Upgrade Preflight Check that will attempt to check your other plugins and themes for problems before you install WordPress or upgrade.
Two of the top five ideas are implemented in this release: Plugin Update Notification and Tags!, and another with very high rating Revamp the default blogroll.
New User Features
The following are some of the new features of WordPress 2.3.
Tagging
In Write and Edit post there is now a tag entry field below the editor.
Using a theme that supports tag will display tags with the categories , for example:
You can change individual categories into tags using the Categories to Tags Converter. Access the converter via Manage > Import in your WordPress Administration Panels.
Tagging importers from the popular tagging plugins are included:
- Ultimate Tag Warrior
- Jerome’s Keywords
- Simple Tagging
- Bunny’s Technorati Tags
Update Notification
You are notified when there are new versions of WordPress:
You are notified of new versions to plugins hosted on the WordPress Plugins Directory.
Improved Post and Draft Management
Now in Manage > Posts you can filter by search term, post type (draft, private, scheduled for future publishing, or published), author, month published, and category. You can also combine any or all of those filters and do them all at once. See Post Status Transitions for more information.
Pending Review
Drafts that are ready for review before publishing can now be easily labeled.
Advanced Visual Editor Buttons
Improvements have been made to the TinyMCE/Rich Text Editor to increase its functionality.
Pretty URLs
WWW or no-WWW? Based on your Blog Address, WordPress automatically redirects the other to your blog address.
Partial post URLs should find and redirect to the full URL.
Also, if you change the Post Slug, the old URL will redirect to the new URL.
Updated Default Blogroll
The default Blogroll now links to WordPress resources Development, Documentation, Plugins, Ideas, Support, Themes, and Planet WordPress.
Developer / Power User Stuff
- Three new terms tables (schema) term_relationships, term_taxonomy, and terms support combined post categories, link categories, and the new tags. The tables, categories, link2cat, and link2post, are gone!
- For adding tagging to themes see the_tags and wp_tag_cloud
- Tag intersections and unions using the “tag” query variable:
- Posts that have either or both (union) of “foo” and “bar” tags: http://example.com/?tag=foo,bar
- Posts that have both (intersection) “foo” and “bar” tags: http://example.com/?tag=foo+bar
- In pretty link form: http://example.com/tag/foo+bar/ and http://example.com/tag/foo,bar/
- $wpdb->prepare() way of doing SQL queries. This is infrastructure to provide a stronger foundation for WordPress 2.4.
- SEO-friendly URL redirection, Canonicalize more URLs
- Upgrade to “800% times faster” jQuery (1.1.4), and some parts of the WordPress dashboard have been converted to jQuery.
- MovableType/TypePad and WordPress Importers memory usage has been greatly improved
- Several bundled libraries were updated to the latest versions. TinyMCE is now at 2.1.1.1, Prototype is at 1.5.1, and script.aculo.us is at 1.7.1 beta 2. More updates to script.aculo.us and an update for TinyMCE Spellchecker are on the way.
- Updated AtomPub support, major rework of wp-app.php Addition of wp-includes/atomlib.php to WordPress, provides a support library to the Atom Publishing Protocol and the Atom 1.0 feed.
- Importer plugins.
- Function: unfiltered_upload.
- Pluggable Dashboard feeds: wp-admin/index-extra.php dashboard_primary_feed, dashboard_primary_title, dashboard_secondary_feed, dashboard_secondary_title, dashboard_secondary_link
- Pluggable Feed Library: load_feed_engine
- Deprecated functions: template tag permalink_link() has been deprecated in favor of the_permalink(); permalink_single_rss() has been deprecated in favor of the_permalink_rss().
- Several unused fields were removed from the options table (option_can_override, option_type, option_width, option_height, option_description, and option_admin_level). These fields had been unused for years.
- Allows multiple category widgets
- The files in wp-admin were reorganized to make things easier to find.
Internationalization and Localization
- Strings for translation can have additional descriptions used also for disambiguation.
- Better support for right-to-left languages.
- Number formats can be localized.
- Numerous smaller improvements.
Changes in Behavior and Other Details
- Table posts post_status enum addition of “pending” was added.
- Link category can no longer be hierarchical. See Trac Ticket #4898.