Well I ripped the band-aid off and did the upgrade. It feels like 2.5.5 or something, not as big a deal as 2.3 to 2.5 was.
I keep almost all of my files in wp-content so upgrading was not difficult. I shut down my web server, renamed the old directory for the blog root, and used SVN to get a copy of 2.6 and moved the old contents to wp-content.
Once that was done, I started up the web server and ran the wp-admin/upgrade.php. It was quick and painless. Everyone should backup their 2.5.1 installation (files and database) and do the upgrade once 2.6 is tar’ed up and placed on the web site.
Some changes:
- The plugins management screen now lets you activate and deactivate selected plugins instead of doing them one at a time.
- The Widgets in the design tab now work and move as you’d expect them. In 2.5.1 they would jump around when I moved them. I hardly ever play with them so that never bothered me.
- Selecting a theme brings up a preview before you activate it.
- Publishing via XMLRPC can now be turned off without killing trackbacks and pingbacks.
- Atom feeds can be now turned off.
- Post versions are now a feature.
- Google Gears.
- SSL admin works well! See Ryan’s post here. I’m using it now and it’s very seamless. It breaks Simple Tags suggested tags, but I’m sure that will be fixed eventually.
There are lots more changes of course; I’m just using it now. So far it’s definitely worthwhile upgrade.