I’ve been long planning to overhaul this effort of mine for a long time now. Funny as it might seem, the general layout of categories dates back to when this blog started out on the original version of Blogger and was carried on and added to by the time I moved the whole thing to WordPress.com and yet more categories were added to the list by the time it traveled over to my own WordPress install. By now the Category structure is bordering on ludicrous, having too many vague categories with posts scattered hither and thither until I can’t even decide where to put stuff anymore.
And now comes WordPress 2.3 (September 24th) with new, restructured Categories that are now once again a separate entity based on a whole new taxonomy system of classification that’s supposed to be much more efficient and easier on the new restructured database.
This all spells trouble for me if I don’t get my categorical act together. So…this weekend the overhaul begins and there are going to be much changing and deleting of categories, creation of new ones and moving around of posts thereof. This, of course, will result in a whole new lot of broken links–at least when the search bots go looking for the old permalink structure which was based on the category the post was published under. In this case the permalink redirect I have installed will not work and it will off to the 404 pages for them. It’s not that bad in the fact that all of my posts have already been indexed under the new permalink structure which is based on the year/month the post was published on but still.
Now here’s where all the new WordPress bloggers that haven’t stuffed their respective blogs full of tags and new categories luck out. You folks will have an easy time of it and the upgrade should go smoothly with no glitches. When I tested WordPress 2.3 beta 1, even my existing plugins didn’t have a problem so the those that have fairly new blogs or blogs that are laid out with few plugins, categories and little or no tagging syste, this will be a breeze. Especially if you use the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin by Keith D’souza (ignore the version number stated on the download link. It’s been wrong since version 0.2–the current version is 0.6 which is what you’ll get).
You also might notice a few features of this blog disappear temporarily while I hunt down a minor but irritating problem that has 404 pages cropping up for WP functions that shouldn’t be indexed and I’m sure it’s one of the plugins doing it.
Such fun.
I may not get it all done this weekend and I’ll continue to post of course and more often hopefully.
Of course there’s work, errands, home projects, health issues…… 
I get scared when there is an update because I am just waiting for all of the emails telling my how the plugins I wrote are now broken. sigh….
Hi Sara,
By what I understand as long as your plugins do not solely depend on the current category setup and they don’t make any direct SQL DB inquiries (API is fine), then you should be okay. I take it also that if your plugins happen to create their own tables, separate from the default WP tables then that too should work without a problem. Sorry, I forgot which WP forum thread had that info. WordPress may be an excellent blogging/CMS platform but their site layout and navigation is lousy.
Now I’m not heavy in WordPress/DB core structure and code by any means. I’m just repeating what I found out through research into this new version. If you take a look at my “Plugins I use” page on the site, out of all those plugins I only had two that were questionable and “Redirection” was not installed at time of test but the author says it should be fine:
“Simple Tagging (partial failure–no tag cloud or tag pages after upgrade. All other functions worked fine)” and “Batch Categories” (?–not sure about that one. Didn’t really test that much).
All the other plugins came back up and ran with no hitches.
Hopefully the overall structure and DB structure in WordPress 2.3 will be the status quo for a good while longer. I really liked what I saw in beta 1 despite the bugs. feel free to ask me to test anything out for you in my local Sandbox if anything arises (XAMPP-latest version…php version 4.what ever’s the latest).
(tiptoes quietly away does not want to disturb teacher)
Good luck, why is there another update so soon ??
Hi my favorite student (and friend),
Okay…let’s see. there’s two updates actually (just what you wanted to hear right?)
WordPress 2.3 is the next major update from WordPress 2.2 which was a major update from 2.1…etc, etc. The folks at WP changed the major release cycle to 120 days ie: more frequent releases.
In between those major releases are security and bug updates such as 2.2.1, 2.2.2 and just released today as a matter of fact is 2.2.3. have you got it yet?
I believe you have WordPress Automatic Updates plugin installed? No sweat then. And upgrading to WP 2.3 when it comes out should be a breeze for you also. Your blog isn’t stuffed full of horse hocky like mine is.