Yesterday WordPress version 2.0.2 was released, fixing several security issues. If you haven’t upgraded already, you should go do so.
I spent most of my Friday upgrading WordPress installations (this blog, my Golf blog, the FeedLounge site and the King Design site). For the most part, everything went smoothly – however there were a few notable exceptions. 
I was upgrading all of these sites from 1.5.2 (plus security patches) except for the Golf blog. I had no trouble to speak of upgrading this blog or the golf blog; then I got to the FeedLounge site.
- I ran into some caching issues right away on the test server and had to disable cache.
- The upgrade plus the cache issue also seemed to convert me back to the old FeedLounge theme – possibly due to the theme name having a space in it (”FeedLounge v2″ vs. “FeedLounge”).
- The changes in how the rewrite rules are handled violently disagreed with the permalink structure I’d chosen for feedlounge.com. The main problem was me wanting /blog to be both the root of the blog and the base for the categories. I was finally able to track down the specific problem and fix it – more on this later.
- Then feedlounge.com went away for a bit. Good times!
The King Design site was pretty smooth, with the only issues being:
get_the_excerpt()no longer appears to work for pages.- The new rewrite rule handling broke some of my
is_single()checks.
For being such a major upgrade, I have to say WordPress did a pretty good job keeping things compatible. With a project used in such a wide variety of ways, it must be a huge challenge to keep moving forward while trying not to break existing installations.
I plan to report the issues I ran into1 with test cases so that folks can decide if they are worth fixing or not. Details of the issues and work-arounds to follow when I have more time.
UPDATE: Oops, found one other issue. It seems that WP now loads the execute-pings.php page via an internal GET call (in the spawn_pinger() function). If you’ve password protected your /wp-admin directory (as I think is a wise idea), sending pings and trackbacks will not happen unless you manually load the execute-pings.php page. I’ll try fixing this via plugin if I can.
- Actually, I’ve reported some already. [back]
Popularity: 7% [?]
dave adds this Comment:
This was the smoothest big upgrade I’ve gone through yet actually. Sorry to hear about your problems…
March 11th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
miahz adds this Comment:
I just wish it was a 5-minute upgrade, like it’s a 5-minute install.
March 11th, 2006 at 11:44 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
It was a 5 minute upgrade for the 2 “blogs”, however the 2 “CMS” implementations took another 8 hours or so.
March 12th, 2006 at 1:22 am
Geof F. Morris adds this Comment:
Dude, well, at least you’re not away from home and hoping no one can slip back through the XSS hacks that exploited your server last week …
[Not that I'm bitter or anything!]
March 12th, 2006 at 10:13 am
Neil adds this Comment:
I’ve been reluctant to upgrade from 1.5.2, just because I didn’t want to deal with any problems and I’m a believer in a “don’t fix if you don’t have to” mentality. So, it is good to hear that most users upgraded easily. Maybe this week, I’ll finally take the plunge. Thanks.
March 12th, 2006 at 6:55 pm
chinki adds this Comment:
i dont know how to upgrade. Someone please help me!. Is it really worth upgrading?
March 12th, 2006 at 8:23 pm
Shari adds this Comment:
It’s weird – I’m usually one of the first people to upgrade. I upgraded the second I heard about WP 1.5.2, and was very happy. For some reason, my gut feels queasy every time I think about upgrading to 2.0. It just doesn’t smell right. And the more people I see who are actually quite bright and have lots of geek skills also having trouble with this upgrade, the more I think it’s just not worth it.
Even worse, I am about to start on a brand new WordPress site for a client, and I am seriously considering installing 1.5.2 instead of 2.0, because it sounds so awful.
I hope WP isn’t going to shoot itself in the foot like so many other programs have.
March 12th, 2006 at 10:44 pm
einfach persoenlich Sideblog adds this Trackback:
Wordpress 2.02 Upgrade Security Release
Verschieden Bug-Fixes und Sicherheits-Updates für Wordpress 2.0 gibt es in einer neuen Version 2.02 zum Download. Genaues Informieren vor dem Update hilft auch hier gewiss enorm weiter. Ergänzende Informationen gibt es bei alexking.org.
March 13th, 2006 at 1:50 am
alexking.org: Blog > Ch-ch-ch-changes in WordPress 2.0.x adds this Pingback:
[...] This is a more detailed list of the issues I ran into when upgrading from WordPress 1.5.2 to 2.0.2, including the solutions I used. [...]
March 13th, 2006 at 10:53 am
alexking.org: Blog > Why You Should Upgrade Your WordPress Install adds this Pingback:
[...] My post about my experience upgrading to WordPress 2.0.x has generated some interesting comments. Some folks are considering sticking with 1.5.2 indefinitely. [...]
March 13th, 2006 at 11:49 am
Feeds Restored : FeedLounge adds this Pingback:
[...] When we upgraded the version of WordPress that is running feedlounge.com, all of our feeds were broken due to incompatibilities in the new rewrite rule handling in WP 2.0. I think I’ve got them all fixed again, but let me know if anything doesn’t seem right. [...]
March 14th, 2006 at 9:53 am
Open Up » Blog Archive » Whoa There, Little Lady… adds this Pingback:
[...] And here’s one more point… when the big boys and girls like Alex King write posts about how they spent an entire day fixing their sites after an “upgrade” to 2.x, lemme tell ya… I think about how bad my back starts hurting after sitting here for 20 minutes, and my spirit is not so willing anymore. [...]
March 18th, 2006 at 4:02 am
David Ing adds this Comment:
I’ve been having problems with execute-pings.php on Wordpress v2.02, as it brings up an execute-or-download panel on Windows.
I suggested to support that they might look into it, and they asked if this happens both in Firefox and in IE. As it happens, it’s only a problem in Firefox, and not in IE. (A mystery).
Since it take me less energy to just open the other browser window (and I prepare my postings in Nvu), I guess I’ll be using IE for posting until the next release — and then I’ll try Firefox again.
March 31st, 2006 at 12:12 am
subcorpus adds this Comment:
yeah “dont fix it if its not broken” is good …
but missing out on kewl fetures … thats bad …
i’m gonna upgrade … that is … if i can …
a geek i am not … but willing to try …
wish me luck … hehe …
February 22nd, 2007 at 5:45 pm