Besides better image handling – the new version has a pretty comprehensive built-in gallery (WordPress head developer honcho Matt Mullenweg did a preview screencast of the new gallery), it also has features like an enhanced in-built tagging feature, integrated analytics (so you get a better idea of your traffic picture without having to go to Google Analytics), a redesign of the user interface that should allow for more intuitive posting.

What’s uncertain is if embedding videos and other code requires having to muck around with the blog settings, because WordPress hasn’t really “played nice” with PHP, javascript and flash files in it’s previous incarnations.

Also, there’s a big question mark about the compatibility with WordPress plugins (generally developed by third party and independent developers) designed for earlier versions of WordPress.

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So the $64,000 question (or perhaps in today’s context, the $1million question…) is as an Internet Marketer – either you promote other products as an affiliate or you have your own products – should you upgrade to WordPress 2.5 now?

Here’s my personal take…

If you started out with the later versions of WordPress  2.2.x or WordPress 2.3.x and your blog works ok now, you should not have too much difficulty with the upgrade. Maybe 1 or 2 plugins might stop working, but you might be able to get along without it.

If on the other hand, you started out with WordPress 2.0.x or 2.1.x and you use more than 20 different plugins, you can expect some pain during the upgrade process.

I know specifically if you’re using SEO-optimization type plugins and affiliate marketing plugins, and one of them breaks in the process (especially since WordPress has gone from a category-based data management system to a taxonomy-based one), you might want to hang on for a moment, and wait a couple of weeks before the dust settles.

From what I’ve seen from the notes, it doesn’t look like the ability to post video on the blog is a huge priority at the moment, so podcasters, video bloggers and lifecasters might experience some difficulty during the migration.

Whatever you choose to do, be sure to backup your MySQL database, and copy and paste important settings and information into a text file for reference later in case something goes awry.

There’s nothing more “fun” than doing a one-click upgrade of your blog, only to spend the next 24-48 hours trying to undo it.

If you have the ability to, you might even want to duplicate your existing blog on another domain or a sub-directory and upgrading that instance of your blog. The major bugbears may take a couple of days to show themselves though.

Whatever you do, tread carefully, especially if your blog brings in daily income!

The current version, 2.3, still has a number of issues yet to be resolved, but the great thing is that the Automattic and third-party plugin developers are constantly chugging away at the hardest working blogging platform in my eyes.

Ryan Boren, part of the WordPress development team, just put up his “s/2.4/s.5/g” post that the WordPress development team will be skipping WordPress 2.4 and releasing WordPress 2.5 in March, together with the promise of “some big new features”.

What’re the “big new features”?

No secret really, if you check out the WordPress roadmap.

If you drill down to the specific WordPress 2.5 milestone level, you will find details of some of the features being worked on.

For example, WP 2.5 will have the ability to search through static “pages”, in addition to the “posts”.

Tweaks for WP plugins and cache (which should give better blog performance, as a cache file would require lower resource overhead compared to a .PHP script), uploading of flash and 3gpp files.

And a host of other features designed to make WordPress an easy platform for new bloggers.

For the comprehensive and somewhat gory list of WP 2.5 milestones, you can look here.

WordPress bloggers can rest easy knowing that the development team is on it…