WORDPRESS 2.3 BREAKS MORE THAN IT FIXES BE WARNED!
Yep, I did it. I upgraded the lab this afternoon and there is debris and smoke everywhere. The kids making these version must never test some of the basic functionality. You would think they were throwing hand grenades and calling it “Close Enough” lets call it a new version.
I call it, lets fix something that isn’t broken and break a bunch of stuff and not tell anyone about it.
I’m still breathing smoke and seeing fire, but I think the fire is coming from me.
It is late and I still don’t have a lot of the answers I need.
I’ll write a full update tomorrow on where I’m at in the process and what is broken SPELLCHECKER again. And what won’t work and where they have now hidden some stuff that was in plain sight before.
I thought I better go ahead and upgrade, glad I started with this lab that if it blows it blows. The real works sites sure won’t be upgraded anytime soon.
More tomorrow. Don’t get impatient and when reading this remember the spell checker is broken AGAIN in this version.
There is a lot of hype about the release tomorrow of WordPress 2.3. There are parties being planned, it is a big roll out.
They have done a much better job of explaining what is going to happen and what plugins work and which ones do not. Check this list of working and non-working plugins. WE WILL NOT BE UPGRADING IN THE NEAR FUTURE!!
The lab is where I try out new things and usually upgrade to the latest version of WP when it comes out and provide some feedback on the changes, caveats and land mines.
However, this latest version is including “tagging” in the base functions of Wordpress. The changes are going to break a lot of plugins dealing with tags. UTW (Ultimate Tag Warrior) is one of them along with just about every other tagging plugin now associated with WP.
It is being stated that as is not many bloggers are taking the time to set up a tagging plugin so it is being included to make it easier for those that have never used them.
One of the things that set RE blogs apart from many WP bloggers WE DON’T BLOG FOR FUN. We blog as a part of our business.
In the past when things have been broken for a while with a new upgrade it was more an inconvenience than anything. But messing with the tagging system isn’t just an inconvenience it goes to the core of how we get found in the search engines.
If you upgrade your WP blog to 2.3 you will have to use the built in tagging system, UTW and others won’t work because of the changes being made to the database structure itself.
From what I’m reading it also appear this upgrade will “EITHER DELETE OR REMOVE ALL EXISTING TAGS ON EXISTING POSTS”
Are you prepared to have all the tags on all your posts suddenly removed. Do you know what havoc this will create for how your site is viewed by the search engines?
I tag for local tags as well as technorati tags. I haven’t seen this addressed anywhere in the new tagging system. I don’t care about tag clouds, which are being added in this release. I think they are ugly and take up too much real estate on the screen.
The lab isn’t into new things that can wreck self destruction. No, we won’t be upgrading anytime soon.
My suggestion to RE bloggers. WAIT. If you go to an Upgrade party tomorrow, be the designated blogger and let the hobby and geek bloggers go first.
Remember those kids that liked to build beautiful models of cars so they could blow them up? That is what this sounds like to me. I’ll be following this with interest over the next week.
I have some small single property site blogs which are not longer needed (the house actually sold) I’ll upgrade a couple of those with existing posts and tags. I’ll also be watching to see if some of the plugin authors UTW primarily make changes to the plugins so they will still function under this upgrade.
For me this is one time where “If it isn’t broke don’t fix it” comes into play. The logic “Well most people aren’t using tags anyway so lets blow everything up for those that are in hopes that those that don’t will. DUH!
Let us know your experience if you do upgrade or have further information to share.
Have you ever tried to grow peas in a day? Did you know you can do it?
- Layout the rows
- Dig up the soil
- Mix into the soil manure and potting soil (Home Depot has both)
- make a row with the edge of a hoe
- space the peas to be grown about 10 to 12 inches apart
- Cover with about 1/2″ of soil
- Water in with sprinkler
That’s not hard, and you are growing peas in a Day!
Now you need to
- water them regularly
- pull weeds
- put up strings for them to climb as they grow
Oh, did you think you would be Harvesting Peas in a Day?
No that happens in about 90 day. Maybe a 100 pea pods a day depending on how many you planted, then as the season progresses you can expect up to 1000 pods a day. I forgot to mention I grow snow peas, I like them, I don’t have to shell them and throw away the pods. I used to take them into the office in baggies. Snow peas are expensive and people love it when you give them a bag of fresh snow peas.
Do you know what would happen to my peas if I decided they weren’t growing fast enough and started changing things in the garden?
- Move the rows over a foot closer to the sunny side
- Double the water
- No they still aren’t growing, cut the water
- Change the rows from N, S to E, W
- Add more fertilizer
- Change the string out they are climbing on to fishing line
- cover them during the day to keep the sun from being too bright
- cover them at night to keep the dew off
- add pavers between the rows to make the garden pretty
If I did all these things or even some of these things do you think I would ever get to harvest any peas? Some changes might make the garden look better to the eye, but they won’t make the peas grow any faster. Some things take time to mature and bear fruit.
Stop ripping your blog apart.
- Pick a good theme
- Activate good plug-ins
- Use productive functional widgets
- Add content regularly
- Weed out the Spam and Eye Candy
Now give it time to grow. It takes time to grow and be found and produce fruit.
You can’t be changing themes to make it pretty. Adding eye candy which slows down your load time. Weed out the Cute plugins and widgets which will supposedly bring you traffic and expect your blog to grow.
If something needs to be addressed or fixed do it. Too often I see bloggers either bored with the “Look” or going crazy over SEO and “Trying New Stuff” to improve their rankings. Harvesting Search Results and Rankings takes time.
Instead of spending your time on SEO gimmicks use that time to research, plan and write good quality content which is like watering your blog as it grows and the harvest starts to come in.
Everything I wrote about growing Snow Peas is true. The best time to plant them is between now and October 10. I don’t know who came up with this time frame, but it works. Of course you have to be in Tucson : ) I can’t imagine trying this in Minnesota!
Another reason for growing peas. You might find a black pearl.
Now I’m wondering if I should stop blogging about RE Blogging and start blogging about gardening. Growing Corn no there’s enough corn in the RE blogosphere as it is.
Calling all Real Estate bloggers, especially the Geeks. Here is your chance to be in on the ground floor of cutting edge technology in Search Engines.
You can sign-up to be one of the first RE bloggers to enter the Powerset Labs. Meaning, you are an alpha or beta tester.
I just signed up myself. Here is the first email after confirmation I was a real human and not a Google spybot : )
Hi!
Welcome to Powerset Labs, , a community where you can use early versions of our technology, provide feedback, and contribute to making our search engine and products better.
Due to extremely high demand to try out our technology, we’re letting users into the community slowly to make sure that everyone has a great experience and that the community builds organically. I ask you to be patient with us and expect an invite in the near future.
Right now, Powerset has released two technology demonstrations in Powerset Labs. Unlike other search engines that index keywords, Powerset does a deep linguistic analysis on every sentence it reads. We extract and index facts about each sentence in each page, making our index the first truly robust semantic index of the web. These applications show off the power of the index we’ve built. You can read more about these applications in our blog post (http://blog.powerset.com/2007
/9/17/powerset-launches -powerset-labs-at-techcrunch40).
The Powerset blog post is very interesting reading. Take a look then you decide. . .
Are you a RE blogging geek at heart? You might just want to check out Powerset.com
Do you have a philosophy for your blog? Have you ever thought about it. Are you trying to tell a story about your community? Are you drawing a word picture of life in your community?
The Lab is more oriented to be topic driven. RE Bloggers, specifically leaning toward self hosted Wordpress Bloggers, but with many topics that apply to blogging in general.
For the most part there is not an ongoing story here.
My Tucson Real Estate in The News is a blend of the two, at least it started out that way. It was started to provide analysis of all the Tucson Real Estate related articles appearing in local publications. Almost every article in the newspapers need to be analyzed to find out what is really in the content and not just the headlines and subtexts which often portrayed a completely different picture than the data itself. Along with that it centers on the Monthly Tucson MLS Statistical reports and breaking down those numbers with analysis and summaries.
Salted in with these two topics were posts on Tucson Subdivisions, Tucson Condo, Living in Tucson and Tucson events of interest.
On July 15, 2007 I started a new blog. This blog is more a serial novel of Life in Tucson Arizona, and real estate topics of interest included. It is designed more to establish a relationship with readers and bring them back, daily if possible, to see what is going on in Tucson.
A serial novel approach is one that is looking for regular readers. The reference Topic approach is looking more to snag a reader from a search engine search. Those readers may hit the blog, get the information they want, and never be back again. Some of those readers bookmark the site thinking they might be back to this reference site again.
For example if you are just looking for a way to clean and shine saltillo tile then it will probably be a one time “Hey, that’s great I know how to do this now”. If it is a search on Water in Tucson, or Cactus in Tucson, or Things to do in Tucson, they might find the site an ongoing resource they want to come back to again.
Is it possible to blend these two? YES, it is possible.
A couple of ways to make blending easier for your blog.
- Meaningful Categories to group posts
- A series of posts on specific topics broken into groups.
- The voice you use.
These are just a few things you can do to help create a blended blog approach attracting both those that are using a search engine to search for specific information, and those wanting to find a place to check in regularly and find out what is new.
The Voice You Use
I’m going to step completely outside the RE blogging community because I know we all have our favorite authors. I don’t want any of those biases to take your thoughts away from the point. Instead I’m going to use an example that is completely separate from the real estate community with the exception of the fact he has photographed some mighty pretty and majestic real estate.
Scott Kelby’s blog is a perfect example of Voice. Scott first got my attention with his book The Digital Photography Book. (This is a great book, but be warned, you might just end up spending a lot of money on photography equipment because he make you want to take good photos). The Digital Photography Book is written like a blog, with each page a post.
Scott has a wonderfully warped sense of humor and he speaks with the voice of friendship on every page and in every post on his blog. I read Scott’s blog everyday. I don’t own a copy of Lightroom, or Photoshop. I don’t do wedding photography or take picture of people very often. I don’t go to sporting events (though I enjoyed Scott’s images of the Bears and Browns game he recently attended.)
So why do I read his blog everyday? It is his Voice. He is down to earth, fun to read and makes everyone feel at home and at ease. He’s a teacher and he is always on. He’s the kind of teacher with understanding that gets a student excited about learning. If he has a ruler in his hand it is so he can show you something great, interesting or funny. Not so he can wrap your knuckles and tell you to pay attention and do better.
Find your voice and you will find your audience. I’ve always been interested in photography, but Scott is one of the people that’s helped re-ignite my passion for the camera and light.
There are lists of names I could give here, and someday might. Think about the blogs you read regularly and I’ll bet you have been attracted by the voice of the blog as much as the content. You might not even have been aware of it. That is how subtle and strong the voice of your blog can be in attracting regular readers.
What have you got?
- a serial novel
- a reference book
- both
What’s your voice? Do you know? Do you have one?
Find the answer to these questions and you will find coming up with something to write will often be much easier and attract more readers in the process.
The post “When Your Website Doesn’t Look Right” dealt with making sure your site displayed properly in multiple browsers. I still run into a lot of sites that look fine in Fire Fox but are broken in IE 6 or 7. It usually has to do with the overflow float issue IE is famous for and which causes the grinding and gnashing of teeth for a lot of bloggers.
At least for those that care about making sure their blog is readable and not broken with the content shoved to the bottom of the page under the last entry in one of the sidebars.
I’ve had some bloggers say, “I don’t have IE, or I don’t have access to IE 6 etc.
Well now you don’t personally have to have any of these browsers to check your site and see how it displays. Simply submit your site to BrowserShots. Select as many different browsers and operating systems as you want to check and submit.
In a few minutes you will have screen shots of the way your site looks in all the browsers selected. There are lots of setup options available before you submit your site to be checked. Here is a sample of some I checked against the other day.

When you mouse of the individual images they enlarge for a better view the various browsers displaying your site.
I would suggest anytime you change themes, add or tweak the way your theme displays you check it against this site.
You take the time to write the posts, take the photos and publish fresh content to the site. Take the extra time to check it occasionally to see, what your readers are seeing when they come to your site.
I would especially recommend this if you suddenly see a decline in readers. As a reader, I’m lazy, I don’t want to have to scroll down to see what you wrote. I’ll come back when you “Fix IT”. After coming back a few times to the same issue I wonder if there is anybody even paying attention.
BrowserShots is a great way to check your site. It is another tool that should be in your blogger blogbox. Why the willow leaf? It isn’t displaying right, it should be up and down, not sideways.
More Fun with Animoto
I made these earlier today then had to do an open house. I’m pretty sure they are the First Hip Hop Virtual Tours In Tucson.
Two versions of the same home at 1635 Deer Shadow Lane in La Reserve.
The second ever Tucson Hip Hop Virtual Tour
I hope no one gets hurt either laughing or trying to dance to these videos. We hope you are having a great weekend. Oh, Yeah, I’m going to make more of these.
“Hey Dad, this is a cool house I want to live there.” I’ve got a perfect home for the next one. Anybody else want to try Hip Hop Virtual Tours?
Animoto is a BLAST! Who said real estate agents are dull, and real estate boring?
The boys at Sellsius have surfaced and they have done so with a bang in the blogosphere. Introducing some of us to Animoto. Animoto is a blast.
Here is a quick short that took just a few minutes to put together.
Limit your images to 15 and select the 30 sec free option to play around with it.
If you are using Wordpress editor you will need to work in Code view turning off the visual editor as it thinks it is smarter than you are and strips off needed code.
It will display properly the first time, but after that forget it. If you want to work in the visual editor I recommend paste in the code just before you publish. If you want to preview the post with placement then switch user settings to code view when you are done writing and formatting your post. Then paste in the code, preview and publish. (go to users, select your profile, uncheck use visual editor, save)
You will need to remember to make this switch to the code view editor if you want to make changes to the post in the future.
Unlimited length and images can be obtained with an annual subscription of $30.
The only limitation I can find that some will not like. Once you generate the video there is not going back to tweek it with the same effects. You can change the images, and the order of the images and the sound track, but when you click to generate the new video, it is random, you have not control.
Going back to add a forgotten image or taking one out that doesn’t look right will result in the making of a completely new video. If you can live with this limitation you might have a lot of fun with Animoto.
Glad to have Joe and Rudy back in the pool.
Greg Swann provided the experiment for the lab by creating this blog in a single bound and making almost all of the content on Pages not Posts at Real Estate Weblogging 101.
I first wrote about this in Real Estate Weblogging 101
The experiment was to see how long these pages could stay in the active index and what pages and when they would start to show up in the supplemental results.
Google came along and threw a bit of a monkey wrench into this little experiment by not showing supplemental results anymore in the site command, or in the index for that matter.
Eric Blackwell had a post Supplemental on Supplementals stating that an “&” needed to be added to the end of the site query to see supplemental results:
site:realestateweblogging101.com/&
Here are the results as they are returned as I write this.
Six pages returned:
Real Estate Weblogging 101 › Login
| Real Estate Weblogging 101. Username:. Password:. Remember me. Register; Lost your password? Back to Real Estate Weblogging 101. realestateweblogging101.com/wp-login.php – 3k – |
Real Estate Weblogging 101 - 2 visits - Jul 11
| By Greg Swann and Teri Lussier with Kris Berg, Brian Brady, Allen Butler and Jay Thompson. Go to the head of the class; About Real Estate Weblogging 101 … realestateweblogging101.com/?page_id=54 – 20k – |
Got Voice? And other questions for which I have no answers …
| Got Voice? And other questions for which I have no answers… Go to the head of the class; About Real Estate Weblogging 101 … realestateweblogging101.com/?page_id=15 – 23k – |
The goal of real estate blogging is not SEO results but making …
| The goal of real estate blogging is not SEO results but making enduring connections with your client base. Go to the head of the class; About Real Estate … realestateweblogging101.com/?p=58 – 25k – |
Real Estate Weblogging 101 › Lost Password
| Real Estate Weblogging 101. Please enter your username and e-mail address. You will receive a new password via e-mail. Username:. E-mail: … realestateweblogging101.com/ |
Real Estate Weblogging 101 › Registration Form
| Real Estate Weblogging 101. Register For This Site. Username:. E-mail:. A password will be e-mailed to you. Login; Lost your password? … realestateweblogging101.com/ |
I find these pretty impressive results considering this site went live on June 21, 2007.
These six pages are for the most part exactly the kind of pages you want falling into supplemental results.


Every page on the site had a link to the other pages on the site because of the links to those pages being provided on each page in the sidebar.








