WordPress 2.1 was released yesterday. I won't be upgrading, at least not for a while. If you read my previous bitchfest, you may remember all my problems with the beta version. Every difficulty I was having has since been addressed and the final version is now very solid. But there's still one thing holding me back: plugin compatibility.

In my testing, I'm still having issues with some plugins. To be fair, a lot of those problems are not widespread and may in fact be limited to my very specific set of circumstances. There is one incompatibility, however, that is not limited to me and that's Ultimate Tag Warrior. The current version of UTW does not play well with WP2.1. There's a nasty little bug where a new comment can erase a post's tags.

2.1 does have some excellent new features and I'm disappointed I won't be jumping on that bandwagon just yet, especially after testing it for six months. There's one bright spot in all of this. I don't need to upgrade.

The WP dev team has announced that because of the bump in minimum required MySQL versions (2.1 now requires MySQL 4.0, remember), they won't be abandoning the 2.0.x line. They've committed to maintaining 2.0.x for an additional two to three years. Most webhosts will have some sort of policy requiring you to keep your blog software (and any other scripts you run) updated for security reasons. A vulnerability in your blog software can compromise the integrity of your server and may put other people at risk. Your webhost will be seriously pissed at you if someone exploits a hole in your blog and there are server problems because of it.

The nice thing about the current situation is that I don't have to jump on 2.1 to stay on top of security. In the future we'll see WP 2.0.8 and 2.0.9, etc. (Or maybe 2.0.7.1… I'm not sure how they're going to version that.) I'll upgrade to 2.1 eventually, as soon as my issues are sorted out, but there's no pressure.

You shouldn't feel pressured either. 2.1 is a big deal, and is definitely worth the upgrade, but there are some real gotchas involved. If you can, test 2.1 on a second blog. Like I talked about (at great length) in my previous post, downgrading is a massive chore, so it would be a real kick in the teeth to find problems when it's basically too late to do anything about it. At the very least, be sure to check the (sadly, incomplete) plugin compatibility list to see if your favorites are ready to go.