WordPress 2.3 has finally been released to the public. This is a major release and users of WordPress are encouraged to update as soon as possible. Before you do anything, make sure you create a full backup in case things go bad. I’ll be updating this blog throughout the night and hopefully, I’ll still be around when you wake up. If not, you know what happened to this site.

Time to review the change log to find out why we should upgrade.

• Native Tagging Support: You can now user tags in addition to categories. 2.3 includes a set of tag importers for tag plugins that existed prior to 2.3 These importers include Ultimate Tag Warrior, Jerome’s Keywords, Simple Tags, and Bunny’s Technorati Tag plugins. Matt states that the new tagging system is pretty fast which should please a number of webhosting companies.

• Update Notifications: WordPress 2.3 introduces a way for users to be notified when a new release of WordPress is available or when an update to a plugin has been released. This feature works by sending your sites URL, plugins, and version information to the wordpress API.ORG service which compares the information to their internal database.

• Canonical URLs: Canonical URLs enforce no www-preferences, redirect posts with changed slugs, redirect URLS that get cut off in emails similar to the correct post. According to WordPress these new URLs should help users as well as providing more SEO options.

• Pending Previews: Those who use multi-user blogs or WordPressMU will appreciate this feature. Authors can submit a post for review by an editor or administrator, where before, they would have to save a draft and hope someone noticed it.

• Advanced WYSIWYG: WordPress has somehow manage to stuff more features into the Visual Text editor. This update now shows off more features that in TinyMCE that were previously hidden. Dave, looks like your secret is no longer a secret.

In addition to these new features, developers will have a host of new things to deal with such as Atom 1.0 support, jQuery, a new taxonomy system, new importers, hooks and filters and much more. The WordPress community has also helped contribute to over 351 trouble tickets that were closed in the Trac.

You can view the Codex for more information about the release and some screenshots. And of course the place to download is always the same. Before you upgrade you may want to check out our Preparing for 2.3 post.

Matt is hosting an upgrade party within the San Francisco area but I figured I would host one of my own on Skype. If you are awake and care to upgrade your WordPress installation along with me and a few other people, be sure to add me jeffr0e to your Skype contact list and let’s get this party started.