As anyone remotely familiar with WordPress 2.7 will know, 2.7 introduced a very cool feature: the automatic upgrade.  This is cool for a few reasons.  First and foremost, it prevents the blog owner from having to manually copy the new version over to their web server.

In any case, it’s quite annoying when you administer four blogs and all but one detect the updated version.  You see, WordPress is on a 12 hour update-check.  So, you could conceivably be forced to wait for up to 12 hours for your WordPress installation to detect that it needs to be upgraded.  Not anymore!

If you have access to your raw database, you can browse to the wp_options table.  In that table will be a row called update_core.  Delete this row.  Now, I will give this disclaimer (as any good technical advice does): BACKUP! before you do anything to your database.  After you’ve deleted said row, refresh your dashboard (you don’t even have to log out and back in) and look at the top for your upgrade notification.

I’ve seen some message boards that suggest altering this row.  This is bad for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the update_core data itself is serialized and you can break your installation if you screw up.

Now, I say all of this to say this: WordPress 2.8 is pretty cool.  Check here for a complete list of the new features.  Now, an excerpt:

On June 10th, 2009, WordPress Version 2.8, named for noted trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker, was released to the public. For more information on this enhancement and bug-fix release, read the Development Blog Announcement and see the Changelog for 2.8.