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January 04, 2006

Reasons to not upgrade to WordPress 2.0 from 1.5.2

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In preparation for doing my first upgrade of an existing WP 1.5 site, I did some research first to try to ensure the process went as smoothly as possible (when I begin it – which I still haven’t gotten to yet).  I almost cringe in writing this, because I truly love WordPress and everything the team has done to provide such a wonderful free blogging tool for all of us.  But the truth is that I came across a number of posts hi-lighting problems people have already discovered in 2.0 and/or reasons why they don’t feel upgrading to 2.0 is worth bothering, and I’d be remiss in not reporting that. 

I know that those of us who want to be on the bleeding edge will disregard all of this and upgrade to 2.0 because it’s cool and simply to have the latest (if not the greatest – although that remains to be seen) version.  But for those fence-sitters, here’s some added info you might want to have in making your decision as to whether or not to upgrade your working version of WordPress 1.5.2 that you’ve been happily using to the new WordPress 2.0.

Here are some reports of problems with WordPress 2.0:

And then there are others who have documented why they’re not upgrading:

  • WordPress 2.0… Who Cares?, which provides an extremely detailed feature by feature list of why TheBisch hasn’t found a compelling enough reason to upgrade.  In sum – he doesn’t think the new features are ‘all that’.  He also points out that a lot of what’s new in WP2.0 pertains to code in the back-end which is designed to make things worlds easier for WP developers (those folks who create all the wonderful plug-ins we all can’t live without, as well as those who make the themes and templates which then personify our blogs).  That’s great for developers, but for those who are blogging it doesn’t do them a spec of good JUST YET.  First the developers need to use all those fabulous new hooks, etc to create plug-ins and themes which are compatible with v2.0, and that’s gonna take some time (even if it is easier for them to do than in v1.5).  But it does mean that down the road we can expect newer and greater plug-ins with features we might never have even imagined possible – we just have to give the developers time to do their genius stuff.  And in TheBisch’s mind, until that happens and bugs are hammered out, he doesn’t see a reason to bother with the upgrade.
  • Phu Ly, an accomplished WP 1.5 Theme(Gentle Calm, Flex, Gespaa..) and Plug-in author writes Why If..Else has not been upgraded to WP 2.0
  • Tamba2, who actually wrote one of the upgrade guides, is actually NOT upgrading himself and posts his reasoning here

If you’re not upgrading, Asymptomatic would like to know why not, and asks that you comment on his post to provide your own reasons for the choice not to upgrade (or upgrade problems that you’ve personally encountered) – to date, there are 106 responses to that post and many of them are rather informative — I’d highly recommend anyone considering upgrading give this post and it’s comments a good read. 

In a response to a post by Phu Ly, Asymptomatic wrote the following giving his take on all the comments on his post regarding upgrading to 2.0

“It’s certainly not for everyone.

To generalize on most of the answers I’ve read so far, the response is one of:

1) I’m not upgrading because my favorite plugin/theme doesn’t work.

2) I’m not upgrading because there is no benefit to me over what I have

3) I’m not upgrading because of flaws in the development/testing/release process for which I’ll wait for patches.

Any of these could also factor heavily into one’s decision to upgrade some blogs and not others.”

All in all, there have been a lot of people saying there’s just too much work and too many chances of problems incurring, coupled with too little incentive for them to do the upgrade.  However, many of these same folk have said that they would use WordPress 2.0 if they were doing a fresh install for new blog.

As for me, I feel I owe it to the WP team, as well as to all of my blog readers to perform an upgrade on at least one of my WP 1.5 blogs so that I can report back what my own experiences with it were and whether I’d choose to do it again on other blogs.  And I *will* do this.  However, given the reports of time consuming problems that could be encountered, and that I’m super short on time b/c I’m crazy behind in my work that pays the bills, it could be a few days or even longer before I can tackle this project.

January 4, 2006 in Reviews, Weblogs, WordPress | Permalink | Email This Post

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Comments

I didn't plan on upgrading until about Easter time, but with some extra time over Christmas, I did a thorough backup and upgraded two installations with no problem. I can read that others have had troubles with bugs, but I am quite happily running with no issues.

Posted by: Donovan | Jan 9, 2006 9:56:28 AM

I'm going to be switching to WP2.0 but I won't upgrade from WP1.5. Why? Because I'm on Blogger.com right now. WP2.0 gives me a better transition than WP1.5 which I've only used on a test basis. I'm not using any thing (yet) that would break WP2 so I get to start fresh. I'll be very careful to test any plug-ins on my two test bed blogs before using them on the real thing. And as always, backup slowly and carefully. :)

Posted by: Walter Jeffries | Jan 13, 2006 12:27:03 PM

I think the real question isn't whether we or not we are going to upgrade but when. Most of the articles you cite point to the fact that current features or plugins won't work in Wordpress 2. When I need something that is not compatible with 1.5.2, or when I see a security update that says go to 2 or your blog will explode with intruders, then I'll jump on it. Until then I'll wait until the bugs get ironed out.

Posted by: michael | Feb 28, 2006 3:18:08 PM

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UPDATE: How to Blog has MOVED! Please update your bookmarks and feeds! The new address is :
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