WordPress 2.0

I’ll be writing more about WordPress 2.0 but I wanted to make sure you all had access to some great information and posts about it before I get to the topic.

Those of you using WordPress.com have already been using WordPress 2.0, or a near proximity to it. So you’ve been able to see the wonderful new administration panels and Write Post features like WYSIWYG and image uploading and browsing, as well as the instant categories and menus that open and close.

There is a lot more to know about how WordPress 2.0 has been improved, so read on.

Things to Know Before Installing WordPress 2.0

As with every upgrade or new installation, there are some things you need to know before installing or upgrading any software program, including WordPress 2.0.

There have been a LOT of changes to the programming code and look and feel of WordPress. For the most part, the basic user will only see a cleaner and more user friendly interface. The power user will find that it is faster and has a lot more bells and whistles including image uploading, better importing from other blogging tools, CMS features, WYSIWYG Rich Text Editor, improved user and author permission levels and functions, vastly improved post preview, and easier Theme/Presentation interface.

You also need to know that the API hooks for WordPress Plugins, especially those that tie in with the Administration Panels, have been seriously updated and changed. This means some, but not all, of your plugins might not work. There is information below under Upgrading WordPress 2.0 to help you understand what will and won’t work with WordPress 2.0.

Here are some posts that will help you learn more.

And if you are nervous about upgrading to WordPress 2.0, this is what Owen Winkler from Asymptomatic has to say about that:

So if you don’t want to upgrade because you don’t think that 2.0 offers you anything, just wait a couple months until the really fun plugins start appearing.

Installing WordPress 2.0

If you are installing WordPress for the first time, then following the simple instructions in WordPress Codex – Installing WordPress AFTER you have spent time understanding the minimum requirements for installing and running WordPress.

To get familiar with how WordPress works, check out the following articles:

Upgrading to WordPress 2.0

UPGRADING HINT

Print out your Plugins List from the Administration Panels. Go through the list of Matt’s List of WordPress Plugin Compatibility with WordPress 2.0 and check off what will need upgrading or removal. Check for other plugins to replace those incompatible with WordPress 2.0. Be sure and turn them all off before you upgrade, and then refer to the list for which ones to turn back on after you upgrade. Print out a new list to help you remember what plugins you have activated and installed for future reference, just in case of a crash or data loss. And once you have upgraded, take time to do a new backup of your WordPress blog so you have a fresh new copy with the new upgrade.

If you are upgrading to WordPress 2.0 from a past version, follow the instructions for WordPress Codex – Upgrading WordPress, making sure you 1) backup WordPress, 2) delete all old files in your WordPress folder EXCEPT for the /wp-content folder with your Themes and Plugins, and 3) follow the instructions exactly.

It is highly recommended with this upgrade that you turn off all active Plugins before upgrading as there are quite a few incompatibilities with old Plugins in WordPress 2.0. For specifics, see Matt’s List of WordPress Plugin Compatibility with WordPress 2.0. Be prepared to find new versions of old plugins that won’t work, or give them up or find compromises with other plugins.

Here are some other articles to help you upgrade to WordPress 2.0.

Download WordPress 2.0

For the latest stable version of WordPress 2.0, you can download it from the official WordPress download page.

If you are unsure of what version you are currently using, there are two places to check. First, view the source code of any generated web page on your WordPress blog. In the top of the source code, you should see:

<meta name="generator" content="WordPress 1.5.2" />

If not, then check in the /wp-includes folder for the file called version.php and view it in any text editor. The version will be listed there.

If you are in a hurry to embrace the newest version of WordPress, download and install it now. If you are not in a hurry, while there are awesome features and benefits in upgrading your blog, there are no critical updates or changes that I’ve found. Yes, it’s faster, cleaner, and has some neat bells and whistles, but your visitors will not know the difference. If you are a little conservative in nature, and while it is nice to be the first on your block to have the latest version of WordPress, consider waiting a bit if you are not a thrill seeker. Often an immediate patch comes out as so many users race to use it, discovering a few bugs along the way as they test it out on their systems. And, like mentioned above, if you wait, you can get the updates you may need from your favorite Plugin authors to make your upgrade go much smoother and keep the features you’ve added to your blog.

Site Search Tags: wordpress, wordpress20, wordpress+2.0, 2.0, update, install, installation, new, version
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen

6 Comments

Nat

Posted December 28, 2005 at 12:42 am | Permalink

Wow, very informative. Thanks alot. Also thanks for the comment over at pseudoweb.net. You sadly caught it in its state of stagnant renovation. But thank you for the input. 🙂

Anyway you asked about the plugins. the plugins i am using in those areas are:
Popularity contest by alex king, time-since by dustin, and time of day by phu ly. Everything else is done by templates tags.

hope that helps

Nat

Posted December 28, 2005 at 1:13 am | Permalink

Good luck with your writing. If you need any help (I doubt you will but hey…) I love me those useless statistics.

Lorelle VanFossen

Posted December 28, 2005 at 1:26 am | Permalink

Thanks. As a teacher of writing, both on the Internet and otherwise, thanks for the offer of help. 😉 I swear there are some days when I really need it. hee hee

deanna

Posted January 3, 2006 at 9:48 am | Permalink

Hi Lorelle,

Thanks for your tips. I”m not a techie. My designer rolled wp into my music site, so I’m in no hurry to attempt an update. Last night, after being a holiday slacker, I decided to write a bunch of drafts to put up later. This morning, the draft titles are still there, but all the content is missing. When I try to edit existing blog entries, the same thing happens. The titles are there, but the content is not. The only plugin I use is the WYSIWYG for composing posts (http://mudbomb.com/archives/2005/02/02/wysiwyg-plugin-for-wordpress/). When I deactivate this plugin, the content reappears on my published entries, but my draft content is STILL missing even when the plugin is off.

Can you advise me? Is the problem the plugin? If it is, would it be affect my blog like this even though I have not upgraded to wp 2. I’m still using 1.5.2

Thanks for your help. Good luck with your writing endeavors.

Deanna

Lorelle VanFossen

Posted January 3, 2006 at 11:59 am | Permalink

Deanna,

It appears as if you have partially solved the problem yourself. You have tracked it down to Mudbomb’s WYSIWYG WordPress Plugin. But it might not be that plugin but the way it interacts with other plugins that may attach themselves to the Write Post panel like a tagging, keywords, or spell check plugin. They could be clashing.

The first thing to do is contact the plugin author. Do not upgrade until this problem is solved. It’s good that you know you have the latest previous stable version, so keep it that way until the problem is fixed.

The second thing is to go through your plugins and turn them off one by one to see if they impact your draft content. Turn one off, go to the Manage or Write Post panel and click on a draft. If the content is there, you may have found the co-conspirator. If it isn’t, then go back to the Plugins panel and turn the plugin back on and go to the next.

I personally can’t stand WYSIWYG, though I have to admit that the new one with WordPress 2.0 is nicer, they still have a long way to go to really fix it to my personal standards and blogging style.

Third, post a note on the WordPress Support Forum about the problem. Search first to see if someone else has had the similar problem and come up with an answer, and then ask. They are awesome folks there, ready and willing to help. But start with the plugin author first.

Also, take time to do a full Backup of your WordPress blog right now to make sure that your hunt for the problem doesn’t make things worse and you have something close to right to fall back on.

I’ve lost plenty of posts for different reasons, especially during the massive test driving of WordPress.com (and WordPress 1.6/2.0 driving it), hours and hours of work gone in an instant. My husband is now used to seeing me sob over my computer, bashing my head against the keyboard, but this is how things are tested thoroughly, and I’ve learned to save save save and backup backup backup and roll with the losses.

Thus, you get a better WordPress product, helped by my tears. 😉

Good luck and let me know how it turned out so we can all learn from this.

snapchat

Posted January 22, 2015 at 4:54 am | Permalink

Hi, I do think this iss an excellent web site. I stumbledupon it ;)I will come back once
again since I book-marked it. Money and freedom is the best way to change,
mmay you be rich and continue to gukde others.

10 Trackbacks/Pingbacks

By Paperback Writer » Wordpress 2.0 on December 29, 2005 at 10:30 pm

[…] Lorelle provides an excellent guide. […]
By Playpen on January 2, 2006 at 3:16 am

Playpen upgraded to WordPress 2.0

Playpen has now been upgraded to WordPress 2.0 largely without pain. In fact, without any pain at all, although I was particularly careful to back-up everything possible and check the back-up. Lorelle has an excellent collection of tips and links about…
By Playpen on January 3, 2006 at 11:11 am

WP 2.0 broken permalinks and 404 error

Ironically, the recent post I wrote about upgrading painlessly to WordPress 2.0. This resulted in my trackback to Lorelle’s tips on upgrading not working correctly (as the trackback link led to a 404 error), so thanks to her for letting me know. …
By Lorelle on WordPress » WordPress 2.0 Breaks Ecto - Here’s the Fix on January 5, 2006 at 4:31 pm

[…] If you are currently using Ecto to post to your WordPress blog, and you upgrade to WordPress 2.0, according to the Ecto developers, it will break Ecto. But rest assured, the WordPress Development team sprung into action and a fix is available. I recommend not to upgrade to WordPress 2.0 yet as it breaks file upload via ecto and other blog clients. I posted a message to the wordpress-testers mailing list and am hoping they can fix the bug…It worked in a previous 2.0 beta version that I had used, and there were several changes in the xmlrpc.php file between the two versions and all related to the upload function. […]
By Lorelle on WordPress » Release of WordPress 2.0.1 on February 1, 2006 at 4:56 pm

[…] For more information, see my post on WordPress 2.0 Release. […]
By Lorelle on WordPress » WordPress Versions - How Many and What’s the Diff? on February 13, 2006 at 10:38 am

[…] The full version of WordPress is available for download from the official WordPress Download site. The latest version is WordPress 2.0. It’s free and easy to install. […]
By Lorelle on WordPress » Problems with WordPress 2.01 Feeds on February 19, 2006 at 2:16 pm

[…] If you are experiencing problems with feeds with your WordPress blog after installing the new WordPress 2.0.1, then Flyweb has a fix for what might ail you. […]
By Lorelle on WordPress » Do You Update Posts or Post Updates? on March 1, 2006 at 7:11 am

[…] The issue of updating posts is not limited to developers of software, programs, utilities, WordPress Themes, WordPress Plugin, or other services, products or tools. It’s been over a month since the release of WordPress 2.0, and yesterday I remembered to update “WordPress Versions: How Many and What’s the Difference, one of the popular posts on this blog. It still talked about WordPress 1.5.2. Yikes! So I updated it so people can find current information rather than old news. […]
By Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimization Guide « Lorelle on WordPress on September 4, 2006 at 9:40 am

[…] The new WordPress 2.0 and WordPress.com offers instant previews of your post within your WordPress Theme, giving you a chance to really see what it looks like before you publish. If you are using an older version of WordPress, you can get the same live preview by typing in your blog URL with the post number in a new tab or window such as http://example.com/index.php?p=456. The post number appears in the Write Post Panel address bar after you have hit Save and Continue Editing. Using this method in all versions of WordPress, you can actually test your post with any web validator if you find you have problems and can’t track down the culprit easily. […]
By WordPress 2.0.6 Released With Feedburner Fixes « Lorelle on WordPress on June 10, 2013 at 9:27 pm

[…] WordPress 2.0 […]