WordPress 3.2 was released on July 4th and the .1 update was released about a week later.
WordPress 3.2 has some great new features, which you have you can read about here and here.
One thing I did want to highlight were the new system requirements. I’ve run into this issue a couple of times now in updating sites so I thought it was worth mentioning again.
Requirements
- Internet Explorer 6 is no longer supported. If you are using that browser, the WordPress admin won’t work for you.
- PHP 5.2.4 or greater (old requirement – since WordPress 2.5 was PHP 4.3 or greater)
- MySQL 5.0.15 or greater (old requirement – since WordPress 2.9 was MySQL 4.1.2 or greater)
If you aren’t sure which versions of PHP and MySQL your web host is using, contact your web host and ask before upgrading. I’ve run into a couple of ugrades that didn’t work because the hosting account didn’t meet the requirements. The auto-upgrade provided a notice stating this issue before upgrading so nothing went awry but if you upgrade manually you will get the message that the site can’t run the new version and you will then need to replace the files with your backup. This isn’t a huge problem, if you have a backup. If you don’t and you really should backup before upgrading, then you will need to download the version you were running and upload it. At any rate, ask your host first.
If you need assistance with the upgrade or in meeting the new system requiremnts, please contact me.
I have yet to upgrade to the newest version of wordpress mainly due to the fact that my server lacks the requirements on the MySQL and PHP requirements that it set. I would try contacting my host to see if they upgrade the version but I have been a bit confused about their “Internet Explorer 6” drop. That fact has put me on the fence of upgrading to the latest version. I suppose the part that I am mainly confused about is, when readers land on our websites, will it display the browse happy page? Or is the Browse Happy page only for the site owners?
Personally I cant imagine how many self-hosted wordpress owners are still on Internet Explorer 6! I do know though that there are a few of my visitors still on the old Internet Explorer 6 version, so I feel bad if I were to exclude them from visiting my website. The surprising statistic by the way, is about 2.5 percent still using Internet Explorer 6 when they visit my site.
I think that would be an interesting statistic to gather, what percentage of people still use Internet Explorer 6. How about your blog here Kim, how many still visit with IE6?
-Jean
Hi Jean – People should still be able to view your site with Internet Explorer 6 but you can’t use the WordPress admin with that browser.
In the last month 12% of the visitors to this site were using Internet Explorer. And of those 12%, 2% were using IE 6. Most are using IE8. 74% of visitors are using Firefox and Chrome.
Thanks for the feedback on this Kim, I didn’t realize it that the actual usage percentage, was a percentage of a percentage, so that means overall its actually an even smaller!
That’s great to hear about the IE6 issues. I am going to start upgrading my server soon so I can begin implementing the latest version of wordpress, hoping it will speed up things even if its just a tenth of a performance, its a gain nonetheless for me!
-Jean
I’ve made so many changes to some of the core WordPress files, that a problem I could possibly run into when updating the script is overwriting those amended files. I wish that someone at WordPress.org would put out a list of all the files that have been updated in a new version. This way, a webmaster could go into each updated file individually, and make the necessary changes (even though it would be a little time-consuming) with one of those merge-files software tools.
Hi – There isn’t an easy to locate list of changed files. If you are going to edit the core files, then you will have to make a list of the files that you have changed. Or, better yet, don’t edit the core files.