I saw the news, and I wanted to be the first to post about it (I was actually) but I was too tired to do it before I went to bed… That John guy has beaten me to the punch. So here’s my take on what is in the release:

1. Native tagging support allows you to use tags in addition to categories on your post, if you so choose. We’ve included importers for the Ultimate Tag Warrior, Jerome’s Keywords, Simple Tags, and Bunny’s Technorati Tag plugins so if you’ve already been using a tagging plugin you can bring your data into the new system. The tagging system is also wicked-fast, so your host won’t mind.

Ahem… Do I need another system for Google to find even more ‘duplicate’ posts…? I don’t think so.

2. Our new update notification lets you know when there is a new release of WordPress or when any of the plugins you use has an update available. It works by sending your blog URL, plugins, and version information to our new api.wordpress.org service which then compares it to the plugin database and tells you what the latest and greatest is you can use.

This could be seriously useful, as I do get behind with my plugins on the different blogs I manage.

3. We’ve cleaned up URLs a bunch in a feature we call canonical URLs which does things like enforce your no-www preference, redirect posts with changed slugs so a link never goes bad, redirect URLs that get cut off in emails on similar to the correct post, and much more. This helps your users, and it also helps your search engine optimization, as search engines like for each page to be available in one canonical location.

Ah… A link that never goes bad. Should be helpful when I change my options in permalinks (again!).

4. Our new pending review feature will be great for multi-author blogs. It allows authors to submit a post for review by an editor or administrator, where before they would just have to save a draft and hope someone noticed it.

While this is not relevant for my primary blog, I’m looking forward to that feature as an alternative to Role Manager. I’ll be using it on my business website, though, (probably along with Role Manager).

5. There is new advanced WYSIWYG functionality (we call it the kitchen sink button) that allows you to access some features of TinyMCE that were previously hidden.

Some of the features were already via a short cut on the keyboard, wonder if that is better than the short cut trick.

Interesting, but I think I will stave off the upgrade till version 2.3.1 comes out squatting the bugs. I may try the release on a minor site of mine, just to play with it.