What’s All This Then!

After yesterday’s adventure in update to the newly secured WordPress 2.2.1, I was curious about when new versions would be coming out. According to the official WP Roadmap site, version 2.2 may be released in the middle of July and 2.3 in mid-August. I was planning on waiting for version 2.3 but there are some serious security bugs fixed by version 2.2.1.

If you need to update your WordPress, here is the upgrade instructions. In a nut shell, there are five steps:

1) Basically backing up your database files. I also copied all of the files related to my blog to my home computer as part of the backup.

2) Deactivate ALL of the plug-ins. At this point, I went ahead and logged out of my WordPress admin. I remained logged into my Bluehost account so that I could work with the files. I also have a file called iron.html . I rename it to index.html and this will show up instead of my blog. It announces to my visitors that I’m in the process of upgrade (or in the case yesterday, having technical difficulties) and to come back later. Just a courtesy. If you would have visited yesterday, you would have been greeted with this.

3) Replace all files that are listed in the upgrade process. One thing that the process doesn’t mention is deleting wp-content\themes\classic and wp-content\themes\default directories, and then adding the newer versions of those directories that come in the WordPress update ZIP file.

4) Run the wp-admin/upgrade.php file from your browser’s address bar (as in http://yourBlogNameAddress/wp-admin/upgrade.php).

5) I then log back into my site’s admin page. After renaming index.html to index.htm_ , I then open my blog site in another window as a visitor. This way, as I activate each plug-in ONE AT A TIME, I can refresh my visitor window to make sure nothing crashes.

Anyway, the instructions are much clearer than I have briefly written here. I just wanted to make notes for future reference. I hope that this helps both of us!

Popularity: 20% [?]

I’ve finally finished a three hour struggle with the WordPress upgrade to 2.2.1 and now … I’ve lost my sidebar and footer, comments don’t work, some posts show up as ’500 internal error’, arrrgggghhhh! ,So for now, all my plugins are turned off including the do-follow. Sorry… Any one with any helpful thoughts?

UPDATE: hour #4.5 Do you have your blog on Bluehost? Are you thinking about using Bluehost’s new “Fast CGI for PHP” feature? That was the source of my headache. I had enabled this feature and then began my upgrade. After I finished, that’s when trouble began. A couple of minutes online with Bluehost support (always excellent) and they told me to turn it off. TA-DA! I’m back in business.

The only thing that bothers me right now is that my version number hasn’t changed to 2.2.1. It still shows 2.1.2. And the widgets aren’t working without help from “Sidebar widget” plug-in. I’m pretty sure that I’ve updating everything — since I no longer have that helpful post preview window any more and I have an option to disable all plugins with a single checkbox. hmmmmm…. Oh wait! Now my site is complaining about an error in the function.php file dealing with smileys icons. Smileys? Yeah, I’m having a hard time smiling myself…

UPDATE #2: hour #6 The reason the version never advanced is because the files in the wp-include directory didn’t update properly. There was the source of the smiley problem as well. So I’ve reloaded every file into my Bluehost directory. Now version is correct and the automatic display of widgets is functioning. Now let’s see what happens….

Popularity: 19% [?]

You don’t have to tell me. I saw the news yesterday. The end of the world might soon be upon us, heralded by the coming of the five horsewomen of the Apocalypse. Yes, I am referring to the reunion of the Spice Girls! For 11 concerts, they will be getting $200 million each — and for what I ask you! Singing? Did they sing well? Or did they sing, well…

But that was then and now there are reports that the voices of the Spice Girls aren’t quite in tune as they almost were back in their heyday. This is understandable since most of Girl-Power girls have children now. If you are a parent, you know what a toll screaming does on your voice. But don’t worry. The Spice Girls aren’t going to let a little thing like carrying a tune stop them. It’s technology to the rescue! As the Girls “sing”, their voices will be digitally corrected by a computer program. This most evil of programs will magically replace sour notes with ones less sour from songs recorded years ago. Kind of like high tech lip-synching but without any fan feeling that they’ve been cheated of a real performance. After all, this is the Spice Girls that we’re talking about here.

Could it be any worse? Only if Geri appears in Playboy again…

Popularity: 13% [?]