There have been two WordPress milestones achieved in the last few days – one is that it has passed 50 million users – and rising. See the latest stats here.

The second milestone is the release of its 3.2 version, named “Gershwin” (anyone know why?). So far the reviews I have read have been predominantly glowing about this latest version – from the improved backend user experience, to the increased security, to the release of the new standard template Twenty Eleven.

There have been a number of blogs about its imminent arrival – here are two of the best – with a somewhat common theme!

10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 3.2
7 Things You Should Know About WordPress 3.2

and today saw a Mashable article ‘5 Things to Know about WordPress 3.2‘ – which again sung its praises.

Also worth a read for those of us who are interested in WordPress both in the present and in the future is the Q&A interview with WordPress’s founder Matt Mullenweg on Memeburn.

We are now in the process of upgrading our server – one of the issues that you may need to address before upgrading a self-hosted WordPress site. However, this is a good process to go through anyway – bit of server housekeeping is never a bad thing. And then we’re going to try out 3.2 on our website before rolling it out to our clients. We’ve come across an interesting piece on how to upgrade to WordPress 3.2 but many people are waiting for version 3.2.1 to avoid any issues with bugs and fixes. We’ll let you know how we get on when we’ve had a play around with it (we’re very excited!).

However, before I end this blog, and to give this round-up balance, I was interested in the recent Mashable article on ‘5 Services for Building Websites on a Budget‘ because it didn’t mention WordPress. This ommission sparked some debate in the comments section (including an input from me). This article raises a number of interesting points because whilst it is possible to use a range of solutions to build a free or very cheap website that doesn’t address the challenges faced when scoping, planning and building a website in order to ensure it provides a valuable and enjoyable user-experience, delivers real value and results in an increase in business. But that discussion is for a different blog!