WordPress 2.8 Upgrade Is Here, With Problems
Most mornings I log on to my computer, check my email, take a quick look at Twitter and then get down to the business of writing. Throughout the day I’ll check in on my websites to see if they’re all working properly, monitoring my stats for any unusual activity.
Yesterday morning my plans were altered somewhat as I realized that WordPress had issued an important upgrade, version 2.8, with my admin panel alerting me to make that update now. With ten blogs to keep up and running, I would have dreaded this practice a few years back when the process involved turning off my plugins one by one, backing up my databases and ftping the files for each site.
Press Button Updating
These days, WordPress has made updating a snap which allows administrators to press just one button and wait for the update to complete itself. You still need to make sure you have your database backed up, but if you’re like me you already use a plug-in to routinely send backups to your email account or download to your computer.
Now, I don’t automatically do updates as soon as they are available for the simple reason that I know updates still take time to successfully complete. Usually, when there is any sort of update, a number of plugins routinely fail which means that they’ll need to be updated too. In most cases that’s a “push button” update too as the latest copy is available and ready to go.
Starting With The Smaller Sites First
To make things easier for me, I routinely start updating a smaller site, one with the least amount of articles/pages on it. On Thursday, those updates went lightening fast and were done before I realized it.
Several plugins had to be updated, but I did notice that SEM Google Analytics, a plugin for tracking stats failed and there was no replacement for it. So, I deleted the plugin and then checked the footer to make sure my analytics coding was in place — either method tracks stats and I certainly don’t want to miss a moment of keeping tabs on my traffic.
Matt’s Musings Goes Buggy
The first three or four blogs updated quickly and without problems, but when I attempted to update this site, which is my second largest blog, the update failed. Big time. Turns out that the SEM Google Analytics plugin was a bust, so I had to remove it, but when the file transfer protocol (FTP) ended, I could see the blog, but I couldn’t access the admin panel. Something was blocking my wp-admin files and, darn it, I could not figure out what that problem was.
Though I didn’t have a pressing work deadline on Thursday, I decided to quit while I was behind and move on to do my work. Matt’s Musings was still accessible to my dear beloved readers (that’s you!) but accessing the all important admin panel was beyond me. Literally!
Writing About WordPress
This morning I decided to return to this blog especially since I knew I would be writing something fresh today. Turns out that my original was story was to be shelved as this whole WP upgrade fiasco was my top news of the day.
To shorten what has already become a fairly lengthy story I’ll tell you what I did to gain access to the admin panel — I ended up going back and downloading version 2.7.1, the most recent update and uploading those files to this site. Bingo! Problem solved — I obviously have control over the blog again which is good news.
What I don’t have is the latest version of WordPress installed, at least for this site. And, I’m leery of updating three other large blogs including my flagship The Auto Writer site which has more than 1200 articles and pages on it. Sure, I’ll back everything up before I make that attempt, but the hassle of swapping out WP versions in the event that something breaks makes me want to drag this process out over a week’s time instead of the customary one or two days.
Sticking With, Not To WordPress
I’m not any less committed to WordPress because a few problems crop up from time to time, but I have been reading that some people are angry and planning to switch to Drupal or to some other blog or CMS platform. I’m sure my issue will be addressed by someone, somewhere but in the meantime I’ve got a busy day ahead of me and will simply punt this problem into the middle of next week.
See Also — WordPress Woes? Check Your Theme!
Tags: blog, blogging, plugins, weblog development, WordPress
Technology | Matthew C. Keegan, 12 Jun 09
By LarryJackson, June 12, 2009 @ 6:46 am
That’s strange, Matt. Although I only have one blog, it updated quickly and easily, with no apparent problems. I hope you get it all worked out.
.-= LarryJackson´s last blog ..McAlester judge approved one-year sentence for rape =-.
By Matt Keegan, June 12, 2009 @ 6:49 am
Larry, I’m attributing the problem to something besides just the WordPress update. There could be something wrong with a specific plugin or perhaps the theme that is rendering this site inoperable. Regardless, I’ll figure it all out when time is on my side which, right now, it isn’t. Thanks for stopping in!
By Anthony Kirlew, June 12, 2009 @ 9:29 am
Matt, I had a similar incident a while back. When I did an upgrade on one of my many blogs, for the first time, I was starting to get hit with more ifram injection viruses. I though it was ironic, given that I had just upgraded. Was the newer version more vulnerable?
In the end, I decided to close a few of my blogs – mainly the ones that represented interets and not necessarily business related. I beleive WordPress is a great platform, but I do not have 100% faith in it. It also made me consider whether or not I should just pay someone to manage them for me instead of trying to keep them up to date AND current with posts.
Have a great weekend!
By Matthew C. Keegan, June 12, 2009 @ 9:40 am
Thank you for your comment and tips, Anthony. They mean a lot to me — so far my other updates (6) went off without a hitch which leads me to think that there is some other problem going on.
I don’t blame you for trimming your blog network. Right now, every blog I own/manage has value to it, but I’m not about to start a new one unless it has a clear purpose to help my business. These days, its all about using our time wisely, getting rid of the chaff while sifting through the wheat.
By Erik Harris, June 13, 2009 @ 1:26 pm
Whenever doing a major update to WordPress, I strongly recommend backing up both the file system and the database immediately beforehand! Ideally, you might even consider running a test site that houses all of the plugins and themes that you use on your other WordPress sites. That way, you can quickly check to see that your themes and plugins all work with the latest upgrade, and try to fix them there if they don’t.
I got lazy this time. I kept my test blog up to date with the WP 2.8 betas and RC, but never got around to testing my themes and plugins, and it bit me when I did my first site upgrade. My theme broke pretty badly, AND one of the plugins I use (NextGEN Gallery) stopped working.
I’ll go back and fix the theme later, on my test site, and wait for an update to the gallery plugin. For now, I wasted 20 minutes or so by downloading the file structure from my hosting provider, deleting the 2.8 file structure after realizing it caused problems, and re-uploading the 2.7 file structure. Transferring ~2300 files over FTP twice can take quite awhile! The database backup and repair took only a few seconds.
All said and done, I’m back with a working copy of WP 2.7.1 on the first site I upgraded. I’ll work out the kinks in that one before I try upgrading the three others I administer.
By Matthew C. Keegan, June 13, 2009 @ 2:09 pm
Hi Erik, That is a good idea — in addition to making sure your database is backed up, that your files are backed up too. Fortunately, I was okay in both situations which saved me ultimately.
I did manage to figure out what was wrong — SEM Google Analytics was busted so I replaced that plugin in with a more current Google Analtyics plugin. It worked.
I really need to have a “play” WP site to mess around with, but I don’t. A couple of blogs are new, so they update fast and if there is a problem I can usually discover that when one of the newer blogs goes down.
2300 files is a lot to deal with for one blog, but I’ll be there with on e of my blogs probably by this time next year. That means I’ll have to be just as careful as you are when making an update.
Best wishes with fixing your problem too!
By Erik Harris, June 13, 2009 @ 2:42 pm
Most of those files are from plugins and such, Matt. This is a site with a handful of static pages, four or five news posts (blog posts), a bunch of plugins, 40-ish images in an image gallery, and not much else. It doesn’t take much to make a WordPress install (with plugins) contain thousands of individual files. Granted, I could probably remove a couple hundred just by deleting the plugins I installed and have either decided not to use or haven’t gotten around to using.
By ingilizce kursu, June 17, 2009 @ 5:54 am
Matt, I had a similar incident a while back. When I did an upgrade on one of my many blogs, for the first time, I was starting to get hit with more ifram injection viruses. I though it was ironic, given that I had just upgraded. Was the newer version more vulnerable?
By Matthew C. Keegan, June 17, 2009 @ 6:08 am
Ingilizce, I didn’t notice a virus attacking WP, rather it seemed that at least one plugin was causing me fits. Since then, a whole bunch of plugins were updated (which is common following an important update) but everything now works fine with this site fully updated to version 2.8.
By Stancje, June 18, 2009 @ 2:36 am
I have the second blog just for the purpous of testing stuff. It has the exact same layout as my main one but there’s no content to speak of. Every change I try out (like new WP upgrade) first goes through there to see if there’s any problems.
By Matthew C. Keegan, June 18, 2009 @ 5:33 am
I hear you, Stancje. You’re at least the second person who mentioned doing this to me, so I think I’m going to set a pretend site up and see what it does for me.
I can’t afford lengthy down time on any of my sites, so this could make things easier for me in the long run.