MySQL Changes in WordPress 2.1 : Plugin Developers to Note

A guest article by Aaron Brazell on Wordpress notes that WordPress 2.1 will be out soon and Wordpress plugin developers need to fix codes to make their plugins compatible with the new version.

Some notable MySQL related changes in WordPress 2.1 are
* The $table* variables have all been eliminated. They have not been deprecated as doing so would mean that the variables are still present but developers are no longer encouraged to use them.
* Developers using the former linkcategories table should be aware that link categories are now part of categories.
* The posts table now has a column of post_type that should help developers distinguish between posts and pages.
* Future posts now gain the post_status of ‘future’ which eliminates the use of NOW() in all queries in the core.

Plugin developers should stick to the WP APIs as much as possible to avoid such issues. Wordpress users also need to keep their wordpress plugins updated to fix security issues, bugs and get new features.

Though Wordpress 2.0.5 is the officially released version, WordPress 2.0.6 Beta 1 is available to download for WP-Testers.