This blog uses WordPress. You might have heard of it. It’s a pretty nice blogging system. I have only one gripe with it, and that is the automatic update screen. The automatic updating system was added a few versions back and made my life a lot easier, but one really crucial feature it lacks is a link to the changelog!

How should I know if I really want to apply an update if I can’t see what it changes? Sure some people might be OK with changing their software without knowing what changes are being made, but I am not.

Changelogs and release notes are important. The user needs to be able to see them, and they should be available before installing any kind of update. If it’s a bugfix update, I want to know which bugs were eliminated. If it’s a security update, I want to know which vulnerabilities were fixed. If it’s a feature update, I want to know which features have been added!

The most logical thing would be to have a link to the changelog right next to the “Upgrade Automatically” button in WordPress.

Update: After writing this rant, I went to WordPress’ changelog for version 2.9. Apparently one of the new things of version 2.9 is that it requires a higher version of MySQL! This is a big change! Imagine a WordPress user clicking that Upgrade Automatically” button and subsequently finding out that WordPress no longer works on his server!

Requires MySQL 4.1.2 or greater (old requirement was 4.0).

Update 2: I took a look at WordPress’ update code and saw that it automatically checks that you have a compatible MySQL and PHP install before updating, so I guess that nullifies my last complaint but from a usability perspective it would be nice for the user to know that WordPress has actually checked if PHP and MySQL are compatible.