It was still working and was easy to reconstruct, but it raised a big question.

The rest of my sites have some pretty extensive menus.  Some have over 60 pages on them.  I don’t want to have to rebuild them.  I’ve looked at ways to back them up, export them so I can re-import if needed but so far no luck.

I did read one short note about All-In-One SEO having an effect on Custom Menus.  So I think I’m going to de-activate all in one (Yeah I know we are supposed to de-activate all plugins but we haven’t done that for quite a few version now, have we).  If that works without a hitch then I’ll let you know as shortly.

Till then update with caution.  And be sure to update your theme’s and plugins before you update WP.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab WordPress 3.3 Still Working On It

It has been a few versions since I wrote about an update.  The rule of thumb (for those that want a refeasher)  Big upgrades take very precaution.  Ex.  2.9.2 to 3.0  That was a major upgrade.

The upgrade from 3.2 to 3.2.1  is a minor upgrade and can usually be done as an auto upgrade.

This one goes from 3.2.1 to 3.3  This is a big upgrade.  Therefore, take all the precautions that WP recommends.

• Backup your database (I prefer to do this from the PHPMyAdmin)
• Make sure you plugins are all up to date
• If you are coming to 3.3 from a version before 3.0  a prayer is also in order (or at least cross your finger) like that will help

Where You Update

Where you update is as important (or more so) then when you update.  Meaning, keep your impulses in check when you log-in at the coffee shop or Mcds and see the 3.3 is available Please Update now.  Don’t do it from a public wifi connection that is often slow and probably not the most secure.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t even mention this except for yesterday when I was approached by a lady wanting to know how to login at Mcds.  I showed her the connection routine and a little later noticed she was reconciling her checkbook online. (A Simpson moment if I’ve ever seen one).

Wait wait wait . . . for it

I’ll be upgrading a few sites today and if the test sites go well the lab will follow.  I’ll post when the lab is running 3.3 and everything is looking good.

I’ve been getting rid of some old plugins here that are no longer being supported but still have 38 active.  Including some using jQuery which is one of the things being effected by the new version.

The Tucson site uses a lot of different plugins which I’ll also update, (with great caution) so if all is well on the two sites.  I’ll get back to you on the “total” experience.

Finally, I’d wait a week.  You won’t be on the cutting edge using the newest features right away, but you won’t be on the bleeding edge trying to recover from a bug that was missed till in the general population.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab WordPress 3.3 Available – But . . .

By default WP displays 20 to a page, that might be twenty posts, or twenty pages depending on where you are in the admin.  If you are searching it will be 20, whatever you are doing it will be 20.

But if you have several hundred posts and you want to see a lot of them at a time, then the easy thing to do is pull down the screen options and set the display number to 100 or 200 or whatever you want.  Till recently the max number was 99, (No three digits allowed) but now you can add that third digit and scroll away.

Find New Stuff

Well, it isn’t really new stuff, it is Stuff that WP decided to be “Big Brother” on and now Hide so we poor dumb users wouldn’t be confused.

Things like Discussions, Custom Fields and a few other things that we might actually want to control or turn off on a post by post basis.  Pulling down Screen Options in the upper right hand corner can make these features visible.  Let’s hope that if you do check that box, you won’t be “confused” when these options suddenly appear.

However, these settings aren’t global.  This means if you make discussions visible in the Post editor you will also need to make them visible in the Page editor etc.  Each display is separate.  The same is true for viewing pages or post.  Setting to 100 isn’t global.  But it only takes a second to make the switch and then they are set.

This really becomes an issue for those who are brand new to WP and have no idea these functions even exist or where to find them.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab WordPress Screen Options

Twenty Eleven Dumbed Down

I’m going to guess that too many theme developers complained about how robust TwentyTen was as a default theme. My guess is based on the Dumbing down and convoluted way TwentyEleven is structured.

Twenty Eleven Convoluted CSS

It is no longer a robust platform for a theme. It is not easy to change the css and get a great look with a child-theme. Instead it is a mishmash of css using a combination of px and em in the same line. Ex.

#site-description {
color: #7a7a7a;
font-size: 14px;
margin: 0 270px 3.65625em 0;
}

The theme is now fluid.  Which results in much of the width setting being percentages now instead of pixels.  This means that if you want the theme to be wider or narrower in the browser it is pretty easy to made the adjustments.  But if you want to add a second sidebar, make the header narrower and being a single sidebar up along side the header, etc.  Forget it.  This is very simple and easy to do with TwentyTen.  But Twenty Eleven has been dumbed down to be a “basic” default theme.

Default Page template NO SIDEBAR

Yeah, that’s right, the default page template now has no sidebar.  If you want to have a sidebar you have to pick that template option.  Most of the time in RE we want our call to action buttons, links and Broker Identification being

!IMPORTANT

When Should !important Be Used?

As with any technique, there are pros and cons depending on the circumstances. So when should it be used, if ever? Here’s my subjective overview of potential valid uses.

Never

!important declarations should not be used unless they are absolutely necessary after all other avenues have been exhausted. If you use !important out of laziness, to avoid proper debugging, or to rush a project to completion, then you’re abusing it, and you (or those that inherit your projects) will suffer the consequences.

If you include it even sparingly in your stylesheets, you will soon find that certain parts of your stylesheet will be harder to maintain. As discussed above, CSS property importance happens naturally through the cascade and specificity. When you use !important, you’re disrupting the natural flow of your rules, giving more weight to rules that are undeserving of such weight.

If you never use !important, then that’s a sign that you understand CSS and give proper forethought to your code before writing it.

That being said, the old adage “never say never” would certainly apply here. So below are some legitimate uses for !important.

Granted this quote from Smashing Magazine goes on to clarify there are a few times to use it, but not in production.

This is the RC release but far enough along it shouldn’t be at this stage of developement.

Twenty Eleven a Mobile Theme

Twenty Eleven is going for the mobile theme look.  But Why?  The majority of us already have a mobile theme in place for mobile devices.  I would never use my mobile theme as my default theme on my site.  There is no good reason for this as a foundational principle to this theme’s design.  Just as WP is making headway into the Small business community and as a CRM platform they seem to suddenly loose focus and go for the Tumblr blog approach.

How many of us are posting 1 sentence 20 word posts?  That is one of the things this theme is setup to do.  Like I need a template for this?

Twenty Eleven make a huge stride in the wrong direction.  Poorly coded, and focusing on the crowd that would use WP as their personal blog only.  There’s not much here for the business community in a theme.

There is much more to dislike about this theme, but you get the point.

I’m glad we have TwentyTen.  I’ll upgrade it with then new features of WP much the same as other theme developers do now.  I have an even greater appreciation for the author of TwentyTen.  It is an amazingly robust and flexible theme platform.  Developing child themes for TwentyTen is pure joy.

We can only hope that the WP team will shake off the stupor.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Twenty Eleven HUGE! Disappointment

For a few short days I knew what it was like to be a Super Admin.  I setup my first few MU installs under WP 3.0.5.  I loved the interface and easy way I could manage the admin side of editing themes, adding plugins, administering all the sites etc.

Honestly, it was great.  Then along came WP 3.1.  I was expecting a much smoother interface and improvements for the Super Admin.  I was extremely disappointed.  All the ease of using the super admin functions were removed.  Instead of a single click to do almost anything I wanted from the Super Admin section I now have to go to a completely different admin bar with it’s own set of functions.

I can’t make a tweak to the css on a theme unless I navigate away from the normal admin functions, same goes for adding or deactivating plugins.

Now the work flow to make changes include the opening of a third tab on the browser instead of the two I’ve always used.  To get to some functions it now takes three or four clicks instead of one.  Going from one click to many IS NOT AN IMPROVEMENT!!!

I Don’t Like Being “Big Brothered”

These changes to WP remind of Microsoft trying to micromanage me.  I don’t need a big brother or a big bother to “help”.   I really wish the Super Admin was an Option to use the old system or the sludge of a new one.

Big Brothered on Child Theme’s

Yeah, they big brothered us again.  This time only a child theme’s files will appear in the theme editor.  If I want to make a change to a file in the parent theme to see how it will look, I have to navigate to the parent theme, make the change then back to the child theme.

It used to be simple.  They were all there to edit.  If I made a change to a parent theme file and liked the change I would add that file to the child theme.  Not any more.  Now I’m “protected” from forgetting to move that changed file to the child theme lest I forget and those changes be wiped out in a future upgrade.

Never mind that I can still edit the parent theme file and view the changes, and can still forget to move it to the child theme directory, now it’s harder to work.  But Big Bother has “helped me”.  (yes I left the r out on purpose).

I’m new to MU (now called MS) Some of you that have been using MU for some time, do you like the change?

From: Real Estate Blog Lab Super Admin – From One Click to . .

Are You Ready?

I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for WP 3.1 to be released.   This morning I decided to do something about it.   I migrated the mother ship Tucson Real Estate Blog from GoDaddy to Bluehost.     Like washing your car to make it rain, there’s nothing like migrating your primary site to new hosting to kick in an update.

Notices Going out now

I’ve only received the upgrade notice on one of my sites.   It’s a small listing site (it was migrated as well) nothing yet on the rest of my sites.   But it will be showing up on those dashboards shortly.

In the last week I’ve done three MultiSite installs (MU is now Multisite).   Later today I’ll be upgrading the small lab rats first then I’ll upgrade the MS sites (they are all test sites at this point.

I’ll let you know what I find.

WordPress 3.1 is a major update

YES!   This is one time you don’t want to just blow off the warning to backup your database before you upgrade.   DO IT.   I’ll be logging into my phpAdmin and backing up all the databases that matter from the MYSQL Export function.   Whatever you are using to backup, do it.

Plugins need updating TOO

If you see plugins that need an upgrade after you update, do it.   They often need an update after a major WP update.   Things are much smoother these days than they used to be, but issues can still come up.   If   you update and things don’t look right the first thing to do is deactivate all plugins.   Yeah, I know you were supposed to do that before you upgraded and I know most of us don’t. Don’t assume you have a WP issue, I’ve found over and over again that when something goes wrong on a blog it is usually a new plugin and not WP itself.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab WordPress 3.1 is being released NOW!

Matt himself takes the time to issue a statement on an update and calls it “critical” it is something you/we should all take seriously.

I know many of you aren’t in the dashboard daily. And I also know that some of you have gotten used to ignoring those nagging update messages at the top of the admin page. (Some going so far as to install a plugin that turns them off).

This one you don’t want to ignore. I’ve installed it on almost all of my blogs including the Lab and all are working without a hitch.

Most of the blogs were already running 3.0 or higher so they were easy updates.

WP 2.9.2 Taxonomy.php Issue

I just updated an old listing site running 2.9.2 with some out of date plugins. It blew up. The issue was with some out of date plugins which meant I had to temporarily modify the /wp-include/taxonomy.php file. I had to comment out a section, upgrade the plugins, then remove the commented section in the taxonomy.php file.

Find this section by searching for “add_rewrite_tag”.   (It is in the middle of the section you need to comment out.

/**
if ( false !== $args['rewrite'] && ” != get_option(‘permalink_structure’) ) {
$args['rewrite'] = wp_parse_args($args['rewrite'], array(
‘slug’ => sanitize_title_with_dashes($taxonomy),
‘with_front’ => true,
));
$wp_rewrite->add_rewrite_tag(“%$taxonomy%”, ‘([^/]+)’, $args['query_var'] ? “{$args['query_var']}=” : “taxonomy=$taxonomy&term=”);
$wp_rewrite->add_permastruct($taxonomy, “{$args['rewrite']['slug']}/%$taxonomy%”, $args['rewrite']['with_front']);
}
*/

You might try updating plugins before you update WP. They “might” now work at first but could save you the issue I had this morning.   Once you have the plugins updated go back and remove the commented out section.

Again, this is only an issue of your are upgrading from a version earlier than 3.0 and have some old plugins active on your site.   But at least if you get the “Fatal Error” message. you know what to do and how to fix it.

This is a critical update so I would recommend, making a complete backup if you are coming from any version predating 3.0, then proceed with the update.

I know some of you are annoyed with all the security updates coming out with version 3.0.   Personally, I’m not annoyed at all.   I love the functionality of 3.0 and expect after a major upgrade like this to need some tweaking.   This is especially true when all these updates have been security updates.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab WordPress 3.0.4 “Critical” Update

The security issue? If you have someone on your blog as an Author and they are “Malicious” they could gain access to the Admin level.

Now I hope that if you had a hostile author on your site you would have already dealt with the issue. And we won’t go into why you would have someone on your site as an author who was hostile to you in the first place.

If you do, then upgrade now, Then delete the author, or at least make them a subscriber. For the rest of us who are the admin, the author and maybe the only subscriber, upgrade for the the bug fixes and to make the yellow bar at the top of go away reminding you to upgrade.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab WordPress 3.0.2 Just Do It

Kinda, I have most of my sites on WP 3.0.   The newer ones were easy.   Three of those were already on 3.0 Beta or 3.0 RC.

The small sites running 2.9.2 were a snap as well.   I don’t know if I mentioned it earlier or not, but if you are running any kind of cache plugin you will want to de-active it before you upgrade.   Since WPMU is now integrated into 3.0 there can be an issue with a cache plugin.

I found another this week while upgrading the Tucson Real Estate blog.   It has quite a few plugins running and some special code in place to speed up page load times.   Because of this I hesitated to run the upgrade till I had more than a few minutes to dedicate to it.

I can’t stress enough that you:

1. Backup your Database
2. Backup your wp-content directory
3. Have a copy of 2.9.2 available to FTP back if needed
4. Be prepared to restore your database from OUTSIDE WP itself
5. Optional but recommended for this update (DE-Activate all Plugins)

I had all this in place when I pushed the button for auto upgrade.   All except the De-active all plugings.

Yep, you guessed it.   FATAL ERROR.   BIG TIME.

I restored the DB and uploaded the 2.9.2 files back in place.

This time I de-activated all plugins except for a few that I needed to keep the theme functioning.   And a couple I thought totally safe.

The upgrade was successful.   Now I started activating plugins in groups.   My second group brought back the Fatal Error.   I deleted those plugins with FTP but to no avail.   You guessed it.   Restore all again.

This time it was one at a time re-activation.

NexGen Gallery Fatal Error

The NexGen Gallery plugin was the one.   There wasn’t anything wrong with NexGen Gallery.   There was an update to the plugin.   But I hadn’t take the time to see if the upgrade was needed before the upgrade or after.   It turned out to be before.

Once I deleted the nexgen gallery by FTP and refreshed I was able to get back to the admin panel.   Using FTP I put the nexgen gallery plugin back into the plugin directory.   Before activation I updated the plugin then activated.   All was fine.

So I’ve found two ways to take a site into FATAL ERROR territory.   (Not a fun place to go)   But there was no panic.   I knew I had all the files I needed and the knowledge to fix any issues that would arise.   It is nice not to see FATAL ERROR and have your heart in your throat.

What about the Lab?   No, it is still on 2.9.2.   I have a lot of plugins active here at the Lab.   I’m going to run a fresh backup of the database and files then de-activate all the plugins before hitting that auto upgrade button.   I might get to it yet this weekend.   When I do I’ll let you know.

Is it Safe to Upgrade to 3.0?

Yes, I think it is.   This major upgrade was released on June 17th.   We are at July 10 and there have been no bug fix releases.   This is testimony to what a great job the WP community has done in getting 3.0 ready for release.   Don’t cut corners and you should do fine.   But I can’t stress enough de-activating plugins for this release.   Especially if you have a lot of plugins running on your site.   And when you turn them back on, do it one or two at a time.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab A Couple of Gotcha’s with WP 3.0 Upgrade to Avoid

I had one of my sites all prepped and ready to go for this contingency.   As the first session of the day ended a few minutes ago I logged into one of my sites and the announcement was in the sidebar.   I headed over to the lab rat site.   I went to Tools, Upgrade and clicked on upgrade immediately.

It was a blazing fast install

It wasn’t 15 seconds later and the install was done including the new Twenty Ten default theme.   Clean, fast and everything came up.

Not immediately, (when I went back to the dashboard an error was reported, I went to the site and back to admin, all was well)   It was quick.

Now A Word About Cache Plugins

There was one error.   I couldn’t edit or create a new post/page once the update took effect.   There was an error begin reported in the user.php file on line 260.   It turns out the conflict is with validation for users since MU is now integrated in the regular WP install.   De-activating DB Cache removed the error.   I would imagine there will be a few plugins that will need updating in the next week or so.

I can easily live without a cache plugin.   I don’t run them on most of my sites anyway.   I make enough changes to my sites that cache plugins are more work than benefit.

That’s the quick skinny on WP 3.0.

Should you Upgrade NOW?

I would say NO to most.   If you have everything   backed up and your blog isn’t “Mission critical”   . . .     But I would wait a few days to a week to see if other things shake out and some issues come to the fore and need to be resolved.

Overall, I’m really pleased with the changes and upgrades.   The way the editor shows me how the post is going to appear on site is wonderful.

I started writing this early in the day; REBarCamp Denver had filled the day and now I’m closing out the conference with this posting.

If you can’t wait, go for it.   I did, and I don’t regret it.   (Oh, no I didn’t upgrade the most important blogs. )   Being out of town and away from my primary FTP tool, I don’t want to upgrade my prime sites.

I’ll be doing more updates as things develop.   I’ll have a few posts for you on Twenty Ten (the new default WP theme) soon as well.

From: Real Estate Blog Lab WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious” Released Today