I have two blogs to my name. This one and another that I’ve done absolutely nothing with for the past few months despite my best intentions. Both have well maintained databases and clean, dusted, well swept installs. Both use most of the same plugins. I auto-upgraded both from WordPress 2.7.1 to 2.8 two days ago.
I’ve never had an upgrade fail, auto or otherwise. However…
The blog that I’ve done absolutely nothing with over the past few months upgraded without a hitch and putted happily down the road without a single hitch or hiccup. This one however, failed to extract the downloaded 2.8 zip file after 5 tries and upon the 6th it finally gave in and successfully completed the upgrade (or so it said) and then promptly threw a 500 error that absolutely refused to go away. To add an extra kick to the whole mess my error logs were completely ignorant of anything that might have gone wrong.
I threw up my hands in surrender, shut down the computer and spent the rest of the day reading a good book.
The next day I brought out my various implements of destruction and went after the problem. After much grunting, groaning and constructive cursing it turned out to be one of 4 plugins that are currently sitting in the penalty box for the foreseeable future until I feel motivated enough to hunt down the offender and have it promptly executed.
Now this old blog is humming right along and I’m liking WordPress 2.8 quite a lot. 795 bugs, many of which have been sitting around for a long time now have been fixed (the devs finally getting down and cleaning out Trac of all the dead weight), a new and much better widget interface (finally) and finely tuned (and faster) database amongst many other fine tunings and performance improvements.
Now if I can only get back to posting on a regular basis without the blog or my body throwing fits all will be well, yes?
First of all welcome back! I haven’t done the upgrade without you around. Mind telling me if any of the offending plugins are ones I have?
Or is it safe for me to do the update?
Elaine – I suggest that just for safety’s sake, you deactivate all your plugins first and then go ahead and do the upgrade. After the upgrade is done, reactivate your plugins one by one but leave the “WordPress Tweaks” plugin deactivated (hasn’t been updated in ages, meant to tell you to dump it but I was interrupted as you know). If one of the plugins you activate drops your site then just give me a holler and I’ll remove the offending thing and have it shot.
I noticed that super cache hasn’t been updated in over a month too…which is very odd! Any comment about that one?
Hi Elaine – You and I have the latest version and it’s running fine on both of my 2.8 sites. I’m guessing that Donncha just hasn’t updated the max version number to 2.8 on the WP plugin directory yet. Either way, it works with 2.8.
Ok I’m going to do the upgrade, wish me luck or I’ll be calling on you to fix things.
I upgraded seven sites. Three went without a hitch. Three failed and had to be upgraded manually by uploading the files. One not only failed, but even though I uploaded all the files it still insists that it is running the old version. Weird.
Grandad – On that one that still shows the old version, did you completely delete the “wp-admin” and “wp-includes” directories or just overwrite them? I’ve often found that overwriting can occasionally cause problems like you’re seeing. I have to admit though that this has been the most troublesome non-major (meaning non-”major overhaul”, no DB upgrade type of…) upgrade I’ve experienced yet. And I’m running the latest version of PHP to boot (5.2.9).
Must be the economy.
oh boy!! I’m down with same 500 error. It is just not going. When I login I end up with 500 error. I just don;t have time to hack this thing now.
Should I go and delete plugins? Is there a way to deactivate plugins offline (via server ftp)?
Bail me aaooouuut..
NVeldala – (liked your cartoons by the way)
The first thing you’re going to have to do is to use your FTP client and:
1.Download all your plugins in the “/wp-content/plugins” directory to your computer (back them up in other words) then…
2. Via FTP, delete all the plugins in your “/wp-content/plugins” directory with the possible exception of “Akismet” if you choose.
Once you accomplish this then clear your browser’s cache and attempt to log in again. If your problem was like mine then you should be able to log into your admin now. If not then your next recourse is to download WP 2.8 from Wordpress.org, extract the ZIP file and perform a manual upgrade via FTP (not hard) but just make sure you completely delete the online “wp-admin” and “wp-includes” directories before you upload the new version. Once those 2 directories are uploaded then it’s safe to overwrite the root files with the exception of the “wp-config” file (can’t anyway). I never recommend overwriting the “wp-admin ” and “wp-includes” directories. This should pretty much solve any problem but try deleting the plugins first and save yourself some hassle.
Hope this helps some.
*eNVy kneels, takes Kirk’s knuckles and kisses on them (godfather movie mafia style)*
Indeed Kirk!! Comicpress-Manager plugin was the culprit. I removed it, logged in, dectivated and upgraded. It now works fine.
Thanks a ton for saving me time.
I’m glad you liked my cartoons
[btw, I cannot post from behind a proxy on your website]
Thanks & Cheers.
NVeldala – Aw, c’mon…get up. No need for bowing and kissing knuckles. Just send money.
Anyway…
Glad you found the culprit. Now’s the time to contact the author of the “ComicPress-Manager” plugin and let him/her know that there’s a problem. Can’t help you with the proxy thing, could be one of my anti-spam plugins that’s stopping you (if so it’s WP-SpamFree) and being able to identify the commenter is one of it’s functions and the proxy probably inhibits that. Hard to tell.
WP_SpamFree by default blocks proxies, but you can disable that feature. I had the same problem.
[and I just want to see how narrow these comments get!
]
Thanks for your suggestions Kirk. I’ll try it out immediately and keep you posted.
-eNVy
Grandad – You maxed it out. Any narrower than that and it would be one word per line–short words only.
So question…do you have allow commenting behind proxies enabled? I seem to get enough “new wave” human type spammers as it is.I won’t mind reading them out I suppose but I was just wondering.
Yup. I have it enabled and have had no problems since. I used to be inundated with the crap, but for some reason they have been leaving me alone. Maybe they know now that I will just take the piss out of them?
Grandad – Could be, could be. You just might have them cowed. Okay, so I enabled commenting behind a proxy (thanks for the info) so NVedala, are you listening?
Trying out this post from behind proxy at work.
YAY! Kirk, it worked.
[and maybe nuking Panama and Ontario helped too?]
Grandad – Ah, no wonder my spam count dropped a bit over the past couple of weeks. Glad you didn’t nuke any cities in Russia itself as I believe their automatic launching devices leftover from the Cold War are still up and running. Would have made a real hash of things in general never mind the spam.
I was just popping over to say ‘oh yes, wordpress upgrades have given me heck for years now’, but your comments were so amusing I almost forgot to say that.
So. Wordpress, eh? It seems like upgrading is an awful lot of trouble sometimes, and it also seems like new versions are coming out almost before I can upgrade to the last one. Or maybe I’m just losing track of time.
What? It’s already Thursday?
Rachael – Hiya! And welcome back. Glad to see you’re still caffeinated. To be truthful about it, the fairly new built-in auto-upgrade feature has worked very well up until now (an errant bug got into the auto-upgrade process…fixed in 2.8.1). Having plugins botch up an upgrade is old hat however, part of the ever going adventure of being your own webmaster (I always have fun…I think?). Still, WordPress is the easiest to upgrade out of all the platforms out there so far.
And yes, it’s Thursday already (although I had to check my calendar first before I was sure myself).