WordPress 2.7 Upgrade

caymanhost — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 06:18:31 +0000

With the first stable release of WordPress 2.7 or, wordpress 2.7 Coltrane to give it its correct title, there has been a flurry of posting around the blogosphere and the usual avalanche of questions and answers. If you are a blogger and you’ve managed to miss out on the fact that WordPress 2.7 represents some significant changes over all previous versions you might want to check your pulse, but then read on to find out what all the buzz is about.

I normally proceed with caution each time a new WP version hits the streets to let them iron out the inevitable bugs and to give the plugin authors time to catch up, but this time I decided to forge ahead, upgrading another blog before this one just to see how it went.

The good news is that it went pretty smoothly so I moved on to The CaymanHost without too much trepidation and set the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin in motion. I’m pleased to say that aside from a few minor glitches and irritations the upgrade went well here too, but there are one or two plugins that don’t want to play with 2.7 and have thrown their rattles out of their prams. More of that in a bit.

Rather than regurgitate all the details of the changes in the look and feel of WordPress 2.7 from an admin point of view I will refer you to K-InTheHouse’s excellent and comprehensive post entitled “Top WordPress 2.7 Tips, Hacks, Plugins & Resources” where you will find plenty of very useful links and information.

For a quick peek at the new backend admin interface and some of the new features I’ve included a pretty detailed video below to demonstrate how it all works. Personally I’m finding it does take a little while to find your way around after having got so used to the WordPress backend of old.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUDM4q7utGQ

So, as you can see, there have been a lot of changes compared to the normally slow development of WordPress, this latest incarnation represents some major differences from the WordPress you know and love.

As far as plugins go, you might want to heed the advice given in the above video regarding a test installation on a subdomain and check the list of compatible plugins listed in K-InTheHouse’s aforementioned post. I forged ahead and I’m pleased to say that the majority of my plugins worked fine although I did have to deactivate and reactivate a couple of them to get them functioning.

Notable exceptions, at least for me are a couple of RSS plugins, including the excellent MultiFeedSnap so you will probably notice a couple of feeds missing from my sidebars for a while. The other plugin that refuses to work is Max Banner Ads from MaxBlogPress, but I’m sure they will soon fix those issues. Until then I shall have to do without it.

The following plugins are all in use and working fine although at least one will effectively be made redundant due the new capabilities of 2.7 Coltrane.

Sez Who and Bumpzee have both been kicked into touch as a result of two much conflict with other plugins or slow load times. This was done prior to the upgrade. SezWho are working on my issues so it may make a return at some point in the future.

Once I get used to the navigation I’m sure I’ll be a happy bunny, but until then it has slowed me down a little As WordPress 2.7 Coltrane includes an automatic upgrade feature, tedious WP updates will hopefully be a thing of the past. The king is dead, long live the king.

The CaymanHost Wordpress & Hosting Advice

WordPress 2.7 Upgrade