WordPress 3.1 pre-release notes

I've released a couple of updates yesterday. Some are related to the coming WP 3.1, some not…

Now that my MySQL cluster is repaired and running again (it had crashed miserably this WE), the key changes are:

• Google Analytics is now using the asynchronous tracker that was released earlier in the year.
• Version Checker no longer checks my SSL certificate's validity, in case I forget to update it on time yet again.
• Semiologic Fixes disables SSL certificate checking altogether when using curl.
• Admin Menu disables the WP 3.1 admin bar on the front end, since the two are using the same screen real estate.

My theme and plugins work fine with WP 3.1 as far as I've been testing to date, and were marked as such accordingly. I've still a few items on my todo list, namely related to Mediacaster (HTML5 compatibility), which will wait for the next batch of updates.

On the WP front, you may have noticed the couple of 3.0.x related security updates. Be advised that the one that led to WP 3.0.4 is potentially nasty and affects older versions of WP. Upgrading is highly recommended — and better now than then.

And, of course, WP 3.1 is right around the corner. The noticeable change is the above-mentioned admin bar, which you may or may not like. I prefer my own, since it gives faster access to management screens, but the WP one is quite sexy too. Again, you'll need to disable my Admin Menu plugin, if you're using it, in order to see what it looks like.

Changes under the hood include more Ajax in the admin area, improved performance on sites with multitudes of users, improved custom post type handling, and updated script libraries.

I highly doubt anything will break on sites upgrading to 3.1 from 3.0 or 2.9, making this a safe upgrade for all sites.

In other news, after going forward and backward for almost a year now, the new backend I'm working on (Postgresql and Symfony/Doctrine-based) is slowly taking shape. I hope to roll it out towards the end of Q1, and I plan to release chunks of it as BSD-licensed code after I test drive it on my end.

Happy New Year!