December 19, 2009

WordPress 2.9 Oh so fine – Is It?

Yes it is. I’ve upgraded,  No Glitches

I’ve upgraded 4 blogs at this point.  Last night, late, I pulled the plug and updated a couple of the kids.  (The little kids, sorry to say, which are easier to sacrifice to progress)  The kids were breathing easy and on their own last night.

This morning I was greeted with an email from a Lab Rat that said he pulled the string last night and found several of his beloved plugins were not compatible with 2.9.  WARNING ENOUGH FOR ME.

I don’t know which plugins, or if they blog itself had been updated recently to 2.8.6.  So for the Lab and the Tucson blog I instituted:

“Standard Upgrade Procedures”

  1. Back up the database from my hosting package  (I never use the WP Backup plugins or export anymore)
  2. FTP Access up and running (Check)
  3. Logged in the the blog on only one browser (Check)
  4. Click on Auto Upgrade and hold breath (Check, Double Check)
  5. “Upgrade to 2.9 Successful”  (Check, we will see)
  6. Open the blog on another tab (Front end what everyone sees)  Inspect (Check)
  7. Go to the Plugin page check for plugins that need to be upgraded (Check)
  8. Open the Editor and write a short post (Check)
  9. Import an image into a post, add a caption, save draft, preview (Check)
  10. Add a comment (Check)
  11. Upgrade the rest of the blogs and do the same procedures (This one is for me, Check)

Almost everything seems to be functioning normally.

I did notice one small glitch, but not sure it is related to 2.9.  I imported an image and added a caption.  The caption didn’t appear in the post.  I opened the image and added the caption back in.  It stuck this time.  Not sure what happened there but thought I’d mention it.

A plugin here at the lab I have never used “Custom Post Templates” which required creating the templates (something I never did) caused an error below the editor.  I deactivated the plugin and all error messages went away.

Plugin Compatibility Checker

I did a lot of searching this morning for a compatibility check site like when we upgraded to 2.8.  I couldn’t find one.  Not sure why not.  Unless this one was believed by the dev team to have little impact on plugins and their code.

2.8 changed the way widgets are handled.  That was a major change to existing architecture.  It broke a lot of plugins

2.9  added basic image editing, a trash can instead of straight to delete,  easier embed functionality, a few organizational changes of buttons.

Most of the changes in 2.9 were additions which is why I believe most plugins weren’t effected.

I have 89 plugins at the Lab, 49 are active, 23 say they have upgrades.  It was 31 before I started writing this post.  The “mission critical” plugins that had updates were updated.  All is working fine.

All-In-One-SEO Canonical functionality

This update mentioned the built in canonical feature in 2.9 and recommended anyone using this in All-In-One-SEO continue to do so.  I agree.  Part of my “If it isn’t broken don’t fix it” mentality.

Sound the all Clear to Upgrade to 2.9

With warnings:

Be sure you have been upgrading through the 2.8 upgrades (it will go smoother)  If not, I would recommend you increment up to 2.9.  Make SURE YOU BACKUP YOUR DATABASE.  And check things out once you do the upgrade.

If I find an “Gotchas” I’ll be posting them here.

Related Posts :

By Blogsdna

Filed under Wordpress