WordPress 2.5: Upgrade or Not?

Personally, I like the GUI changes 2.5 brings with it.

Here’s the pro-upgrade snip from NowSourcing | Don’t Let Technorati Drop Your Blog:

Technorati has often been criticized of not being on top of things, but this time around I must say good job, Ian and crew! Granted that many will be running around like chickens with their heads cut off

…Technorati authority and blog search coupled with Wordpress blogging is at the heart of social media. If you woke up tomorrow and your or your client’s blog was dropped by Technorati, there could be some serious ramifications.

Conversation is quickly becoming the new form of metrics in social media (sorry pageviews), and without a guide like Technorati, we’d be up a creek without a paddle.

But what if Technorati removed thousands of authority blogs en masse? Best upgrade soon, all!

And in this corner…

And now this from WebGeek’s | Say No to Technorati’s Forced Upgrades - Bad Information Spreads Like Wildfire:

There are a lot of problems with WordPress 2.5 that need to be fixed. For example, it’s broken many themes and plugins (for a LOT of bloggers) due to some standard WordPress hooks being broken. (Being a plugin developer, I have to stay on top of it.)

Keep in mind, upgrading before these issues are fixed could damage business websites that depend on WordPress if custom themes are broken, etc. It may cause costly downtime for businesses, along with many other problems…that’s not a joke. (Not to mention security vulnerabilities that could be introduced from a broken theme or plugin.)

Now, Technorati is saying that anyone with WordPress 2.3.3 is fine, so it might not seem like a big deal. The problem is, that for most bloggers, it’s not easy for them to upgrade to that specific version. For most it’s only practical to upgrade straight to WordPress 2.5, through use of automatic upgrade plugins, etc.

Just because WP 2.5 is new doesn’t mean it’s more secure - it’s just that the security flaws haven’t been discovered yet. There could be a whole slew of new security flaws waiting to be exposed.*

And now, the Technorati Hack

Scott Allen provides this information on WebGeek about how to keep your WordPress version without losing your ranking (possibly) on Technorati:

If you are concerned about getting kicked out of Technorati, you could always remove the version number from your blog or alter it, using Matt Cutt’s bonus tip on WordPress security:

First, open the header.php file for your blog’s theme (or go into Presentation and Theme Editor in your WordPress Admin.)

Look for a line that looks like:

<meta name="generator" content="WordPress <?php bloginfo('version'); ?>" /> (continued) <!-– leave this for stats please -->

Change the

"WordPress <?php bloginfo('version'); ?>"

to

"WordPress"

or

"WordPress 2.5"

(if you want to be devious). The ease of doing this shows how ridiculous and ill-conceived Technorati’s policy is.

Summary:

Along with the interesting counterpoint against the conventional wisdom of upgrading your WordPress software to the latest 2.5 release, WebGeek makes a good point about whether or not Technorati’s business model itself is spamproof enough to survive. All I know is that since Technorati’s announcement I’ve lost a good quarter of my referring links.

But I like the GUI changes, and I’ve not seen any hacks on my site.