I figured I’d follow up my 10 Things You Should Know About WordPress 2.1 with another useful post. The reality is that there were bound to be discoveries by the masses after the launch and over the past few days, this assumption has been borne out. The really tech savvy among us and those who participate (or at least religiously observe) in WordPress development, particularly via the email lists, have a tendency to “forget” what it’s like to not know the ins and outs of WordPress.
So having watched the uptake of WP 2.1 the past few days and learned a thing or two that I did not know along the way, I thought it would be useful to post some of the things that have cropped up in the mass migrations from WordPress 2.0.x to WordPress 2.1.
After my upgrade, my blogroll is all screwy.
I mentioned in my 10 Things article that there were semantic reasons for the combination (at least on the back end) of categories and what was formerly knows as “Links”. You’ll notice that Links is now called Bookmarks and is actually a category to itself among the Category listing.
I still don’t want to get into the semantics of why this was done the way it was done, but in the process of reconstructing this portion of WordPress, it seems that some people are experiencing issues when displaying their blogroll. Though the particulars on these blogs are varied, I should point out that there are two functions - an old one and a new one - and it seems that some people are having problems with the old one working as expected. The old function is get_links_list() which has been deprecated, but not removed, from WordPress 2.1. It is advised that theme authors use wp_list_bookmarks() instead. If you dig into the code, or refer to the Codex page, you’ll find that this function is far more powerful anyway.
Since my upgrade, it seems blogroll items appear in multiple categories.
There is a bug in 2.1 that is not serious in terms of security but can do strange things with blogroll links. Namely, upgrading from a 2.0.x blog can result in some blogroll items being added to other categories. This can be manually fixed and no data is lost, but it is an annoyance. [Trac 3418]
I’m experiencing some difficulties with popular plugins not working.
In my own experiences, there are several plugins which claim to work with 2.1 that do not. The biggest one, for me, is podPress. podPress 7.0 was billed as working in 2.1 but in fact it does not. The developer has assisted me in a small way but the plugin is still broke. That said, Audio Player from Martin Laine does, and has almost the same features as podPress. The Fuzzy Recently Commented widget from Semiologic also seems to not be handling storing of settings either.
Why can’t WordPress support Atom 1.0 as a standard feed format?
Folks waiting for WP 2.1 to get full Atom 1.0 support will have to wait for WordPress 2.2. It was added to trunk in revision 4805, so we should see it in WordPress 2.2. If you’re really daring, and I’m not suggesting that you should be, you could do what I do and run trunk (I’m actually a couple days behind). There is also a plugin that I cannot vouch for but looks interesting that provides Atom 1.0 support to WordPress.
There are no posts displayed after WordPress 2.1 upgrade
Pretty standard answer here. You have to actually run the upgrade script because of the way posts/pages, etc are handled in 2.1. There is a database schema change and the only way the database can be altered to work with 2.1 is with the upgrade script. If you simply upload the files and load your blog, you will see the No posts found message. The upgrade script can be found in wp-admin/upgrade.php and it should be run from your browser.
I don’t see the tabbed editor.
The “Use visual text editor when writing” checkbox needs to be checked under Users > Your Profile.
These are not all the questions coming out, and you may have your own to add. But they are some of the things I’m hearing a lot of. As a bonus, this WordPress theme is the shizzle.
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About the Author: Aaron Brazell is the lead editor of Technosailor.com and a social media expert. His passion is to see companies and individuals use the internet and web technologies wisely and effectively to promote their brands and companies. He served as Director of Technology at b5media from 2005-2008 and is currently an independent consultant.
“There are no posts displayed after WordPress 2.1 upgrade”. In addition to running the upgrade script, I found that I also needed to upgrade the permalink structure. Even though I had run the install script successfully, I got 403 errors on every ’single post’ page until I did so.
“How do I turn on the visual text editor?” I had this turned on and it worked–sort of. It wasn’t until I uploaded the first post-upgrade image that all the buttons appeared and were usable.
[...] WordPress 2.1 Gotchas lets you know some of the problems you might face on upgrading to WordPress 2.1. (No Ratings Yet) Loading … [...]
Thanks for the update on this Aaron. As a developer there is indeed a lot more reading work to be done on WP2.1
I’m still ponderin whether to upgrade a not. May just do it on one of my blogs. Though, not sure which!
Invaluable resource!
Interesting. Had not seen that yet. Wonder if you have any plugins that rely on permalink API that might have gotten bitten in the upgrade.
Sure thing, Ajay. You’re pretty savvy so you shouldn’t have many problems.
Thank you, sir! ;-)
One of my frustrations with the upgrade was the implementation of full feed and the MORE tag. Now if you use more, your feed will be truncated at that point - with no notification in the feed that there is more content at the site.
I don’t use MORE to tease content, but to control the appearance on my front page. Now I’m left with a mix of full and truncated feeds.
Here I was thinking I would try 2.1…and then I came across this post. Perhaps I will be a good little notice user and wait for more people to populate forums with questions and answers to problems before I go and try being a trail blazer :)
[...] WordPress 2.1 Gotchas: Aaron Brazell propone algunas soluciones y consejos para varios problemas derivados de la actualización (en inglés). [...]
After first trying an upgrade which caused a lot of issues than implementing a clean install which had a bunch of issues of its own I’ve come to the conclusion that WP 2.1 was not ready for prime time. I suddenly feel like a MS Vista user.
get_links_list is not deprecated, it’s not in /wp-includes/deprecated.php, by contrast, it’s still in /wp-includes/bookmark-template.php
Technically you are correct. Let me point out as well that folks using get_links_list() may be passing category IDs and those ID’s are bound to change witht he bookmark/list merging.
In you are using the Tiga theme, I have a work around for the links sidebar widget not showing up.
Links Fix
[...] correct adaption to 2.1 thanks to julia: <ul class=”blogroll”> <?php wp_list_bookmarks(1, ‘<h2>’, ‘</h2>’); ?> </ul> [...]
Hey Aaron,
Here’s one for ya. (This is after the upgrade.)
I’m using IE7 and my main landing page /WP gives me an IE error “can’t access page”
Individual pages will come up just fine, but not the Main Page.
My readers using IE are having the same problem, but those using FireFox are not.
Any ideas?
Joe
(I have 3 other WP blogs that were upgraded and are NOT having the problem in IE).
J.
You know, I felt guilty about not upgrading to 2.0.6 and 2.0.7 (after seeing what a process would be involved) so I bit the bullet and upgraded to 2.1 yesterday.
I guess I’m lucky because nothing actually broke (except the LJ Crosspost plugin which I managed to fix myself despite not knowing anything about php!) … but now all kinds of weird things happen in my admin panel when using Firefox - I get strange little empty boxes that won’t close and follow my mouse around (meant to allow me to insert an image in a post?) and the “send to editor” button does nothing at all.
Luckily it all works in IE 7, but what a shock to have to downgrade my browsing experience like that! Anyway, I’m patiently awaiting 2.1.1 that will hopefully fix all this :-)
[...] has posted a list of some WordPress 2.1 gotchas that one might experience upon upgrading to the latest and [...]
There are problems with rogue paragraph openers, too. Here’s the solution.
Another bug has to do with what I think is the Autosave. I’ve found that if I enter text into the text editor before adding a title, I’m unable to save/publish the post.
When I try it confirms if I’d like to publish the post “”
Whether I say yes or no, it doesn’t save/publish and my content disappears.
Where is the solution, Tom ;-)
Stripped from my comment, it seems. :p
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/101906/page/2?replies=32
Aaargh! Tonight it not my night.
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/101906?replies=32#post-506510
[...] WordPress 2.1 Gotchas [...]
Great Post! FYI. Your link to PodPress is broken.
[...] Brazell, in his post “WordPress 2.1 Gotchas” explain the possible problems you might face after upgrading to wordpress [...]
There could have been a browser-cache issue with the rich text editor.
[...] upgrade involved quite a few fundamental changes to the back end, including template tags and other gotchas. So, I’ve spent most of last night and this morning making several underlying changes to my [...]
Thanks for the the thing about the visual editor!
Anyone know anything about the content uploader or something like that? Or is that just the new version of how to select how your photos will be inserted and linked?
[...] when I logged into my Dashboard I noticed an article called WordPress 2.1 Gotchas and clicked to see if this was a common problem that might be listed in the article. Sure enough [...]
Upgrading was not straightforward for me, but I don’t understand php. what is bugging me is that on the post screen the visual editor is now working but I don’t get the “preview” and “edit” links which allowed me to easily switch views without scrolling. Not understanding what is going on I don’t know whether this is a design change or another thing that has not worked quite as it should.
But none of this means I don’t appreciate all the work that has been done and the stability and quality of WordPress.
get_links is also broken. That is a serious pisser.
i just upgraded and all the ‘read more’ links in post where i used the noteaser tag show up as ->
this is really bugging me. anyone else got the same problem?
[...] Some quickies about WP 2.1 and upgrades: 10 Things You Should Know About WordPress 2.1 Some WordPress 2.1 Gotchas [...]
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I must confess that I’m surprised to hear about problems with 2.1. I host at Dreamhost and they have one-click installations of Wordpress. When new versions of WP come out, all I have to do is click a link to upgrade my current installations. The only “problem” I have ever encountered is my custom wp-login.php page getting overwritten.
[...] wish I had found Technosailor’s post - WordPress 2.1 Gotchas - BEFORE I did this [...]
[...] WordPress 2.1 is released and although it’s generally been warmly received, some people are having problems upgrading. There’s also a neat Easter egg that gives you more editing options. Also, you get to suggest [...]
[...] tip: http://technosailor.com/wordpress-21-gotchas/ « So fire us, already | [...]
[...] WordPress 2.1 is released and although it’s generally been warmly received, some people are having problems upgrading. There’s also a neat Easter egg that gives you more editing options. Also, you get to suggest [...]
[...] WordPress 2.1 Gotchas » Technology, Blogging and New Media [...]