Thus far I have to say that WordPress 2.6 looks like a pretty awesome upgrade.  Just did a few upgrades myself, but haven't had time yet to play with everything that is new.


Also here are some of the improvements, updates and upgrades:

    * Word count! Never guess how many words are in your post anymore.
    * Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.
    * Bulk management of plugins.
    * A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.
    * Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
    * Plugin update notification bubble.
    * Customizable default avatars.
    * You can now upload media when in full-screen mode.
    * Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default, but you can turn it on easily through the options screen.
    * Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
    * You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
    * Ability to move your wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts.
    * Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
    * You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.
    * A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.
    * Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.
    * Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.

You can read more (and watch a video tour) from WordPress.org about it here:
http://wordpress.org/development/2008/07/wordpress-26-tyner/

You can download WordPress 2.6 here:
http://wordpress.org/download/

For those of you using Fantastico, the upgrade for you might not come for a couple of more weeks.  As soon as we get a Fantastico update released to us though, and everything is tested and stable you can be sure we'll make it available for you.

Are you excited about WordPress 2.6 yet?   

yes, it's awesome! I am so impressed with the WordPress project.

Well, it means from now on I wouldn't upgrade via Fantastico anymore.  Would take some hacking around the Fantastico settings to make it work again correctly.  The upgrade itself though (doing it via this plugin or manually) should not hurt your site though.  Just make sure that you do it that way from now on.

Thanks for your replies! thats what I've been waiting to hear. I am ignoring fantastico too.

I've never upgraded WordPress before; Fantastico has the upgrade available to me, but it says

 "Click on Upgrade only if
- no files, languages, themes have been modified
- you haven't added mods to this installation of WordPress

Does that mean that if you use a theme other than the Wordpress theme you're gonna have trouble? I use the Mandingo Theme

And what are "mods to this installation"?

So... Has anybody upgraded through Fantastico yet?

Always good to backup before doing any major upgrade or re-install.  So far so good for me too tough, haven't had any issues.  If you installed via Fantastico and then do any sort of manual upgrade yourself or via a plugin, just remember you will probably have to do it that way from now on to prevent future problems.

I wouldn't worry about uninstalling your theme, you may though want to deactivate your plugins.  Then you can turn them all back on once you see the upgrade has been completed and all is going well.