Updating your blogging software may not be the most pleasant experience. I know that many WordPress users have been apprehensive upgrading their versions because some times the update can be quiet painful. My personal biggest concern before updating WordPress is always associated with plugins I have active on my blogs. I always hope that on the other side of the update somehow all my plugins continue to function. I have to say that since the time we are able to update plugins straight from our dashboards, not even once did I encounter problem with plugins when updating WordPress.

So Coltrane is here. I have been using the latest version for a few days now and have to say so far this is the most awe-inspiring version of WordPress I even seen. Take a look at the following video to fully appreciate whats in store for you as far as the latest WordPress version is concerned:

So the first par of some changes on this blog has been accomplished- I have updated the blogging software. Now it’s time moving the comments to IntenseDebate.

For good number of months this blog’s comment were managed by Disqus- a useful third party comment management system. It allowed me to moderate comments on multiple blogs from one place- most of that moderation was actually done straight from my e-mail.

After the recent update of WordPress to the latest 2.7 version, thanks to a friend in affiliate marketing, I have decided to also to move the comment moderation on this blog to IntenseDebate.

This is a good and a bad news at the same time. Since I have grown to love Disqus quiet a bit, it is hard to say goodbye, since it truly served me well.

I also have some logistic issues of moving several pages that with comments numbering above 50 comments per post. Some of them were saved as a plain old HTML pages (it is a long story), so I will have to move at least several hundreds of comments manually- one by one. As a result of it, you will most likely to see a splash page that will tell you that my site is temporarily unavailable- this will be done with Maintenance Mode Plugin. I sincerly hope to accomplish the move before Christmas.

On the good note I am looking forward to IntenseDebate. You have to love the name of the plugin, as many of you may remember that on occasions some truly intense debates have taken place on this blog- so the even the name of is befitting. I also think that IntenseDebate will have a great future among WordPress bloggers. IntenseDebate is now owned by Automattic- the company behind WordPress. They of course offer the integration of their system through plugin if your blog is powered by WordPress.

I also would like to assure that if you commented on my blogs in the past, they are saved and will appear in the same place on this blog (plus on the IntenseDebate website) where you left them after the move is over.

Just spotted today (on Andy’s Blog) a new search widget by blog catalog. With it you can replace your blog’s default search option. Until recently I have tried to use Google’s Custom Search on this blog with some mixed results. It produced some glitches with the older browsers and it took some time to load as well.

You can try the new BlogCatalog‘s widget below:

If you have 30 minutes of free time, you can probably benefit by watching the video below from the WordCamp 2008. The presentation below is made by Stephan Spencer the founder and president of Netconcepts and the author of SEO Title Tag Plugin for WordPress, which I might add should be #1 plugin on your list to install if you are just starting to use WordPress.

(HT: ProBlogger)

UPDATE: To benefit from the above presentation download the PowerPoint Presentation that Stephan mentioned at the start of his presentation.