This is a major upgrade, so Mark on Wordpress didn’t create convenient diff files this time. Instead, follow the instructions over at wordpress: Upgrading Wordpress which are clear and straightforward.

All my plugins were fine with the upgrade, and while that of course won’t be true for ALL plugins, chances are you probably won’t have too much issue with that.

In the same vein, akismet is up to 1.8.1 (although their website gives an earlier version number, I had 1.8.1 after updating). If you have already installed it and are just updating it, all you have to do is unpack the new version in the same plugin directory, you are already set up with your API key and everything (their faq doesn’t make it clear what is involved in updating versus newly-installing, probably because it’s so trivial).

Plus which I use the plugin Bad Behavior for further spam killing (now at version 2.0.9). It works a charm. It’s also been pretty recently updated, so I suggest installing it if you haven’t got it, or updating it if you’re behind.