On balance, I would defer the decision to release 5.0. I came from a financial services background where you locked down your production environment in early December. It was year-end and you couldn't screw with financial transactions and reporting. Too much risk.

While not the same, I think the logic holds forth for e-commerce sites where they are expecting larger than average sales. Add to this, people traveling or on vacation and I think you have a high-risk scenario. The reporting risk here is the press as I don't think they will be forgiving.

Some people have countered, saying the release is OK because 1.3 million sites have installed it. True. I'm one of those installations, but it's on a test site. It's not on a production site. Fortunately, my hosting company allows me to have a staging site. But, not all plug-in developers allow their software to work in a staging environment.

Some developers want you to buy an additional license even for staging. The end result is I'm testing something in a sub-optimal scenario.

Given the current situation, I will defer upgrading till I feel comfortable. This is not to say, I disagree with the direction. It's primarily the timing. I've experienced too many times where projects were released because of external dates and not readiness. The good news is I don't have to abide by those dates.

What also concerns me is the number of people I talk to who have no idea of the editor change but will gladly update thinking 5.0 has got to be better. Those are the people I worry about. Many of them are non-profits or small businesses that don't have the resources to figure out what happened if things don't work. And...I'm not sure how well the hosting companies are prepared to help them.