Upgraded to WordPress 2.5

Drafting this new post in the WordPress 2.5, and I have to say that it’s the most impressive upgrade to date. Already a number of “minor” (no clue how much code it took) tweaks that make a big difference:

  • As soon as you start drafting the post, it auto-saves the post, updates the page to show you the permalink to the post and redraws the screen with context-sensitive buttons (preview, save, publish). It’s seamless and elegant… and all are nice usability enhancements. (For instance, in the rare cases when you need to know the permalink before you complete the post – having the permalink ahead of time is a great help.)
  • The media integration looks awesome – a powerful blend of file uploader and media manager. Click “add media” and you’re given the option of uploading a new file or browsing existing uploads. This is a huge improvement over past attempts at doing this.
  • I’ve finally gotten around to converting some categories (which I started using with Movable Type 4 years ago) to tags. I honestly don’t know if this matters or not, but it seems to be more lightweight and easier to manage as you compose a post. We’ll see. (If you’re already using WordPress, go to “Settings | Import | Convert Categories to Tags”. From there, pick the categories you want to convert, and click. Presto.)
  • If you’re using WordPress on your own server and you’re not using WordPress Automatic Upgrade, stop what you’re doing and install it. There have been times when I’ve gone weeks (in one case, I’m embarassed to admit, more than a month) before upgrading to the most recent version. It led directly to getting hacked, likely a result of a vulnerability in the older version.) Install the plugin, and every upgrade from there on in will take you all of 5 minutes and a half dozen clicks. Seriously, do it. You’ll thank me.

One thing that isn’t working for me, which I was really looking forward to: the plugin auto-updater. Whenever I click “upgrade automatically”, I get the following:

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare pclziputilpathreduction() (previously declared in /xxxx/yyyyyyy/public_html/tins/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade/lib/pclzip.lib.php:5421) in /xxxx/yyyyyyy/public_html/tins/wp-admin/includes/class-pclzip.php on line 5489

Anyone have any idea what that could be?

Overall, I’m really impressed. The upgrade was smooth and the interface enhancements are terrific. If I can get the plugin updater to work it’ll be a homerun.

3 responses to “Upgraded to WordPress 2.5”

  1. Click the deactivate all plugins button. Run the upgrades. Then reactivate all plugins. It's the only way I've found around it so far.I'm assuming that when more than one plugin uses that file, it runs into a problem.

  2. Turns out it was a few different issues: first, a necessary directory hadn't been created in the automated upgrade. If you see the “could not create directory” error, you need to create /wp-content/upgrade, and set permissions to 777. Second, if you're getting errors when upgrading the plugins, you need to set permissions on the plugin directories to 777 as well; finally, empty your WP cache. Once I did all three, I was good to go.

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