Are you ready for WordPress: Dexter?

You better be ready! Since “Dexter”, as in WordPress 2.3 is already launched just a few hours ago (At the time of this posting). I was expecting the release sometime this morning, didn’t expected it almost half day earlier .

So why is this WP 2.3 so special? Cause WordPress 2.3 comes with tons of features that we the users were craving for a long time. Apart from feature richness “Dexter” also took care of over 351 bugs/trouble tickets that were due in Trac. The kick ass features that will rock your blogging-

1. Automated update alerts- This new feature lets you know when there is a new release of WordPress or when any of the plugins you use has an update available. api.wordpress.org collects all the info of your WordPress version and plugin version in order to accomplish that. So no more painful upgrade headache. As far as I remember I have seen this in the Idea section of WordPress site, cool job by making this into reality.

2. In-house tagging system- For a long time WP users were using Technorati tagging, or category to tag their posts. But with the 2.3 in addition to category users will also have ability to use local tags that actually connect the posts and make search easier. Fear not if you are using plugins like Jerome’s Keywords, ultimate tag warriors etc. Tagging plugins you can still import those tags into the new tagging system. But be advised to read this release note first.

3. Pending review- If you have a multi author blog, you will simply love this feature. This allows authors to submit a post for review by an editor or administrator, in earlier versions which used to be shown as others drafts and no ways to determine whether ready for review or not.

4. Advanced WYSIWYG- Come on face the facts, not every blogger like to blog in code view, I would say at least 50% blogger who don’t use desktop blogging clients use WYSIWYG editor to post. This feature will make theme delighted, since they will be given access to some hidden TinyMCE features that weren’t available in earlier version’s editor.

5. Superior Taxonomy system- “Dexter” or WordPress 2.3 introduces new taxonomy schema, which is why any plugin that querying the old one will be screwed up. This new schema replaces the categories, post2cat, and link2cat tables with three new tables (terms, term_taxonomy, and term_relationships) that are more flexible. You might want read this for further clarification on this matter.

These are just the start of a big change, WordPress 2.3 now supports full and complete Atom 1.0 support, including the publishing protocol. So thinking about upgrading to “Dexter”? You must read this “Preparing for 2.3” by Matt. That’s all for now people.