As we kick off this week of WordPress 2.3 coverage, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how this new version is impacting the blogosphere. Probably the most obvious (and luckily, easiest) ways to find out was to look at the trackbacks/comments on the initial announcement post at WordPress. Here’s some of what’s happening:

• Andrew Barnett beat almost everyone out by asking an awesome question: Am I the first to upgrade? Chime in on his blog if you got there first (although he was only nine minutes after the blog post went up!).
• Lucy Lou commented on the development team milking the deadline by waiting until evening to post. I admit, I was kind of looking forward to it in the morning as well.
• Greg Artime describes the native tag support and importing of popular tagging Plugins like UTW as main reasons he’s planning on upgrading sometime this week.
• A blogger named Carlo is one of the first (that I’ve seen, let me know if you have) to implement a tag cloud with the new native support. Again, I’m not sure if I’m excited about tagging yet or not.
• Keith Murray, a WordPress theme designer and Plugin developer (go Keith!) mentions he will be upgrading this week as well as (more importantly for most) upgrading his Plugins to suit 2.3.
• Abhijit is hosting a great comparison between MT4 and WordPress 2.3. Some interesting discussions are cited in the post, and it even got a little comment love from Matt Mullenweg. Definitely check this one out.
• UK blogger Toxic Web posts from a slightly apprehensive stance concerning the new version of WP.
• Adam Tinworth of the journalism blog One Man and His Blog had a problem or two upgrading WordPress. I wonder where the problems occurred, and if there’s anything I can do to help from here at Theme Playground (for next time, of course).
• Finally, Evan Sims takes a deep look at the tagging feature added to WordPress 2.3. And I think his explanation (read: defense) might just get me hooked on the idea.

Scanning the web for WordPress chatter is very interesting. I’m also interested in your feedback on the new WordPress. What’s your experience look like?

They’re at work compiling another big list again. But the difference with this one: user submitted links to great stuff. Not a bad idea. Hopefully (and probably) the community will come together and their comments will overflow with links in abundance.

Oh, and feel free to drop a link to your favorite Theme Playground article if you don’t see it on there already.

Google Trends is a new tool from Google (well…duh) that will graph different popular search trends over the past few years (or isolated, if you so choose).

I see this tool as being an asset to any webmaster. For one thing, it can show you how to best guide your clients’ keywords for SEO. I suggest this because odds are you won’t be an expert in what’s popular in every industry which you have a chance of working with.

Secondly, since you can isolate to your area (sometimes even your city, depending on the number of searches available) it can show pretty well how you can gear your SEO specifically toward what people in your area are searching. For example, comparing the search trends for web design, web sites, and web masters could show you where the emphasis is put in your key demographic (your area) and what direction you could gear your site.

One use of Google Trends below: comparing worldwide searches for web design versus WordPress. Pretty amazing.

(Hint: WordPress is in blue.)

A quick look at the source code of Truemors.com shows that Guy Kawasaki is using WordPress as the CMS behind his site. This is huge news for anyone using WordPress.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the amazing things Kawasaki is using WordPress to do:

• Listing the most popular posts on the right side of the site (called “Greatest”)
• Tagging each “truemor” posted (things like “crap” or “news” or “entertainment” for example)
• Looks like (don’t quote me) a lot of the default text formatting (headers, blockquotes, etc.)

It’s exciting to see WordPress being used (nearly) to its fullest as a content management system. A high profile site like this one (which has been distinguished on TechCrunch and others) gives a lot of credence to those of us who believe in WordPress as handling rigorous site issues.

There are a couple of things worth mentioning though.

1. Site Permalinks
   For best performance the permalinks on this site need to be changed. Adjusting it in almost any way other than the default (?page_id=1234) will help in search engines and general visitor browsing.
2. Improved, Interactive 404 Pages
   As I’ve said before, 404 pages should be very interactive and answer questions more than it should alert the visitor they have reached a dead end. Read more on the topic.

Overall, I’m very excited about this site. It’s a little disappointing, though, that this wasn’t quite done as well as it could have been.