Sephy’s Platzish

While the computer is busy working on burning a couple more DVDs, I figured that I would take a moment and try out a new app that I had downloaded for my iPod, WordPress for iPhone/iPod touch. There are a few cool things about this app - the fact that I can easily post anywhere I can find a wifi connection among them, but there is only one minor flaw:

It lets you put the device upside down (ie with the home button at the top and the (on the phone) speaker at the bottom) this is something unique and odd. Safari lets you do this but the screen will be upside-down.

Another flaw that I have now found is that there is no save feature included in the software. Let’s hope that I can publish!
Edit to add - I found the save button, yay!

I know it’s been a while since I’ve blogged…but one thing that I had wanted to mention is that since WordPress 2.7 has been released, I figured that this would be a perfect time to mention that if you want someone to go ahead and upgrade your blog to the latest and greatest version of WordPress, I’m your fella

What you get when you do your WordPress upgrade with me is a professional installation of the newest version, backups of your current site, and the peace of mind in knowing that you don’t have to worry about getting something wrong

About a year ago, I was introduced to WordPress as an alternative to Blogger, and it was an attractive alternative - simple to use, and if you needed help, it was straightforward to figure out.

Another thing that was beautiful about WordPress was that it was small - just about 1 meg to download and install on your server.

Something else that I thought they were good at, at least at one point in time, was backwards compatibility - i.e. a new version would come out and the immediately previous one would continue to be maintained (like what just about every other software company - even Microsoft - does).

However, that all changed when it came to version 2.5. Among the little notes they included was that 2.3 would no longer be supported. It’s something I hadn’t mentioned when I blogged about it in the past, but it’s something that is important when you have a large userbase.

What happened to supporting old versions?

Admittedly, 2.6 isn’t very different to 2.5 (well, unless you include the database bloat that is post revisions {Side note - I wonder how long it will be before people are getting warned by their hosts about databases filling up due to all the revisions?}, tons of bugs that didn’t happen until upgrading and the fact that the widgets page is still messed up), but there are people who are satisfied with 2.5 and don’t need to upgrade yet, especially when you have a build that has a ton of unnecessary features and just plain old junk included.

Well, except for the Theme Previews - I like that idea, but that’s really for someone who likes to change themes very frequently, which I don’t recommend doing, unless you’re running a test blog and checking if a certain theme works with a specific version of WP.

Oh, by the way, you can’t turn off any of these new “features” directly through the admin panel. If you want to turn them off, you have to edit the wp-config.php file, which is almost akin to editing the registry in Windows - if you mess something up, you could completely bork your blog. I guess that’s something they must have forgotten about - flexibility in the system.

Anyway, one thing I didn’t notice until now when re-reading the announcement post (which I notice doesn’t have any trackbacks on it…I wonder why that is…) was this line, and I guess you have to pardon the poor English of the writer -

The 2.5 branch will no longer be maintain so everyone is encouraged to upgrade.

Yep, much like when 2.5 was released, the immediately previous version will be dropped like a hot potato. In fact, in looking through the bug tracking site, I notice that as of right now, two milestones - 2.3.4 and 2.5.2 - have disappeared completely off of the roadmap.

While looking at the current Google Cache of the site from July 14th at 1:18AM Central Time (US) (image at right, click for a larger version, because you know that it will change soon), you can see the 2.5.2 and 2.3.4 milestones still there, and still with bugs open. Also, the 2.6 release, which was claimed to have been released a month early, had a due date of the 14th. How does that equate to a month early? Anyone? Bueller? By the way, I find it very disconcerting that, within the space of a single day or so, i.e. 24 hours, 759 active tickets (80% of the total) were dealt with - most of them look like they were shuffled off to another version, as only 204 closed tickets show up on the 2.6 milestone page. Thankfully this major bug was fixed, however. I know that I’ll sleep that much more comfortably now…

That brings me to my question - where did WordPress go so wrong? The first step was paying for something that was unnecessary (the new interface in 2.5), then adding a 200+kb unzipping program, and now adding something that will undoubtedly get people in trouble with their hosts for filling their database up quicker than they ever thought. If you need help, however, you can count on the folks on the WordPress forums to assist you, that is when they’re not demanding information in a way they insist it be (which is really nice when you’re trying to finish an upgrade and the blog is telling you over and over and over and over again that you need to login again, on three separate browsers and after clearing the cookies).

Even when a workaround is suggested, it’s not allowed to be marked as a fix, but a workaround, because it might, on some distant planet, open a security hole.

I gotta say that after one experience of upgrading to 2.6 and finding this bug, I’m not ready to recommend that anyone move to it yet. If you have and it does work without any problems, that’s good news to hear, but if you’re on a blog that’s not on the root directory, you might want to wait, because it seems that these problems occur when in this situation.

Further Reading

If you want some more to read on the situation, check out these posts -

• WTF, WordPress? - Snoskred’s first post about the new version. She also suggests an alternative to WordPress in the post. Definitely worth reading.
• Fix for WordPress 2.6 can’t login - If you’re having issues logging in after upgrading, here’s how to fix it, away from the forums.
• It can scramble the brain - Another 2.6 upgrade gone awry.
• Do Not Upgrade To WordPress 2.6! - A roundup of some of the problems that have been anecdotally reported in the new version, with the recommendation to not upgrade.
• Read this before upgrading to WordPress 2.6 - Not only is the new version breaking logins, it’s killing off entire parts of sites, such as the categories list.
• WordPress 2.6 Nightmare Upgrade - Yet another person with categories getting killed off when upgrading.
• I Hate WordPress 2.6 - It’s not in English, but Romanian, I think; this is what Google thinks it says in English
• WordPress 2.6 is out. Should you upgrade. Yes! - In the interest of some fairness, here’s someone who says you should upgrade. Of course, there are no reasons why you should, and the whole post is just copy-and-paste from the original post.
• Installed WordPress 2.6 - Someone else who doesn’t like the new admin interface. When will WordPress learn that they broke something that wasn’t broken?
• WordPress 2.6 upgrade–fixing a login problem - Another login problem that wasn’t resolved by clearing the cookies…
• WordPress 2.6 Released Officially - From Weblog Tools Collection, this is more for the discussion that’s there
• How To Get Rid Of The Annoying WordPress Update Nag - There’s a new version of WordPress available! Gee, like I didn’t know that by looking at the Dev Blog listings on the dashboard. Here’s how you get rid of that yellow bar.
• Upgraded to WordPress 2.6 - This fella had both the index issue, and then couldn’t log into his blog…
• Permalinks fail in WordPress 2.5 and 2.6 - If you use index.php in the permalink structure of your blog, it might not work if you upgrade to 2.6.
• Wordpress 2.6 - Good or Bad? - A look at the features of the new version, along with some analysis of whether or not you should upgrade
• Spam Karma is GPL - Spam Karma, one of the more popular WordPress anti-spam plugins that aren’t called Akismet, is going GPL, in part, because WordPress is becoming too much of a hassle to support

…because I’ve been working on this for a few days now.

It all started a week ago tonight, when one of the folks on the Aussie Bloggers Forums posted a question about text widgets in WordPress. As it had happened, I knew that there was a way to go beyond the maximum number of 9 in the Widgets screen. As it turned out, along with some posting of code here and there, my solution worked perfectly, and a suggestion came about that I might be willing to upgrade to 2.3.3, and you can see where things went from there.

Then, one thing led to another and I volunteered to help her out with the upgrade process. For someone like me, who knows their way around the structure of a WordPress blog fairly well, it was simple, but for someone who might not be as familiar with the back-end (especially working with the raw files on an FTP server), it can get quite daunting, and understandably so. You can check out the result, as it happened on the forums here.

A little story, which I’ve related in the past about how finicky WordPress can be when you’re upgrading it - when I first upgraded my test blog to a new version, I forgot to deactivate the plugins before deleting files and uploading new ones. The result? Nothing. White pages and a freak out.

Where are you going with this?

Well, I’m glad you asked.

Let’s return to the horoscope for my sign for today, as written by Eugenia Last. Mind you I don’t read these things at all, but I just did today for the fun of it (anyway, what else do you do when you’re just kinda lounging in the car, listening to the radio while waiting to go to your volunteering gig? I’d already read through the sports page. ). This is how it read:

You will excel where work and money are concerned. You can develop your own position by offering a service that is in demand. There is money to be made if you use your ingenuity to fill a need in your community.

Immediately upon reading that, I knew that today was the day where I would introduce a service that I realized might have some demand, especially after my experience of helping out with the upgrade described above.

It’s something that, as I have mentioned, can be a bit daunting if you aren’t the most experienced. Even if you are experienced with WordPress, but time constraints limit you in your ability to upgrade your blog or blogs (especially if you do have a lot of blogs, this can take quite a long time), this might be for you.

What’s on offer here is the ability to have someone else upgrade your WordPress blog, along with any plugins that are installed, and provide you with backups of your blog (i.e. a full WordPress export, along with a compressed copy of your installation as it is prior to the upgrade).

If you would like more detailed information, including pricing and contact details, you can check it out on the WordPress Upgrade page.

And, yes, I will do upgrades to version 2.5, if you wish.

And it has nice pastel colors, heh.

Actually, I did the pastels to tell where stuff was, I’ll work on final look and all that stuff later. Right now, it’s a basic shell of how the site will be, with the just the bare essentials in there at the moment.

The good news is that so far, I’ve only managed to completely break the site 3 times, but that was due to missing bits of code from the page that were kinda necessary (i.e. ?> at the end of a PHP statement).

Anyway, the moment you may have been waiting for (and I gotta say, it kinda came quickly considering that just a couple of hours ago, I was looking at one of the files from the default WP theme and going “Huh?” at some of the stuff in there; I’m still doing that, but not as much ) - when I show off a first screenshot of the theme in action.

It will be a little while before I have anything releasable to y’all, but I just wanted to give you a look at what might be coming down the pike.

Tomorrow Later today: TW3, and/or shopping for a bank.