Technorati Wants You to Upgrade to WordPress 2.5

Technorati has been important to a blog’s popularity for quite awhile now, but just how important is being illustrated in an unlikely way. WordPress released version 2.5 recently, and some chose to stick with 2.3.3 for the time being. Upgrading isn’t ALWAYS, but CAN be, a major underaking depending on the circumstances. So between that and the fact that there were some plug-ins not working on 2.5 and a few other things, it was very reasonable for a lot of WordPress users to just hold off for a bit.

Then suddenly Technorati made this announcement, “…we’ve noticed that a large number of blogs remain vulnerable to the security issue addressed by the 2.3.3 release.” So they stopped pinging blogs on the stand-alone WordPress platform that did not upgrade. This is confusing to me because of the wording. If the issue was addressed in version 2.3.3, doesn’t that mean that 2.3.3 is secure and anything below that is not?

I answered my own question by going to the “Ping” area on Technorati and noticed the blog that I had upgraded to 2.5 had been recently pinged, but that the blog I still had on 2.3.3 had not been pinged for 15 days! I had upgraded to 2.5 on some blogs but stayed at 2.3.3 on others so that I could keep in practice on both. (Yes, 2.5 is just THAT different.) This was important to me so that I could be in “top form” when helping clients no matter which version they were using.

Well, now I didn’t have a choice. I guess you learn how powerful something has become when you realize it has a huge affect on your Google ranking. We’ve all learned the power of Google. But now we are just coming to understand the power of Technorati! I didn’t want to lose ranking either place, so I upgraded.

It’s not so bad. The dashboard takes some getting used to. And I guess everyone will be upgrading now, so I don’t have to be worried about being in practice for helping those who kept 2.3.3. They also saved me some money. I was planning to purchase “WordPress For Dummies” for reference for some of the more esoteric stuff, which is only up-to-date to 2.3.3. And then purchasing the one that covers 2.5 when it comes out. Now I’ll just be needing the one. So I guess they saved me $15+