Yesterday afternoon WordPress released the first upgrade to the 2.7 series – 2.7.1. This is the first time you can use the new auto upgrade. I created a short video to show you how to do that and the backups BEFORE you click the upgrade button.
This upgrade fixes 68 tickets per the latest update on the WordPress blog. I have upgraded with no problems on this on my blogs.
Hope this helps you to stay on top of the new upgrade.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
That has to be one of the biggest questions I get when people ask should they uipgrade their blog? I created a video to walk you through not only the upgrade process but how to undo it if your theme causes a problem.
The key is to make sure that you have backed things up FIRST.
You should back up your data base, wp-content folder and the wp-config.php.
The video is about 8 minutes long but with the pauses the whole process of upgrading and undoing it took less than 15 minutes.
Hope this helps you and shows you that IF you back up FIRST it is not a hard process to undo it if you need to.
I do recommend that you check your theme and plugin compatibility first and decide if you want to change them before upgrading if they are not compatible.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Looks like the release of WordPress 2.7 will be the 10th. You might want to look at compatibility ahead of time.
With the security release of WordPress 2.6.5 there won’t be a security reason to rush to the new version but the new features are quite nice. There will be a bit of learning curve until you get used to the new look but it will be the last time you will have to upgrade from outside.
Like the plugin updates in the current version you will be able to upgrade within the dashboard. And yes before someone tells me I know there has been a plugin to do that already.
You should check out your theme for compatibility along with your plugins. You may also want to check your host for compatibility.
Here are some links where you can check each of these out.
WordPress came out with an unexpected update yesterday. With all their work on 2.7 they were not planning this but a security flaw that involves the Snoopy library was announced then.
Because of that they came out with an almost immediate update and it is easy to do but necessary. You will only need to download 2 files and overwrite them. They both go into the wp-includes folder.
You can get the two files from WordPress or download and install the full version. I just grabbed the two files and added them to each blog as it was much quicker. You can get the full story and downloads here.
I created a short video to show you how to just add the two files so you do not have to do a full upgrade.
The first video is the quick version the second one will show you the full upgrade process.
Quick Upgrade
Full Upgrade
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Finally caught up enough to download and install the new WordPress 2.6.2. Don’t see any major changes inside the blog but there is a good reason to upgrade ASAP if you are using any of the 2.6 versions.
Stefan Esser recently warned developers of the dangers of SQL Column Truncation and the weakness of mt_rand(). With his help we worked around these problems and are now releasing WordPress 2.6.2. If you allow open registration on your blog, you should definitely upgrade.
You can read the whole post at the link above.
With any security flaw I always recommend upgrading and as there are a few minor bug fixes the primary reason is listed above. You can check out the minor bug fixes here.
I have added the upgrade video below that I created a while back.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Unlike some previous releases this one is not security related. To quote from the WordPress blog on the 2.6.1 release
August 15, 2008
WordPress 2.6.1
By Ryan. Filed under Releases.
With 2.6.1, we’re continuing our trend of releasing a maintenance release shortly after a major release in order to get fixes for the inevitable “dot zero†bugs into your hands without a long wait. If you’re happy with 2.6, however, keep on using it. You need not upgrade to 2.6.1 if 2.6 is getting the job done.
2.6.1 offers several improvements for international users. Styling of the admin for right-to-left languages is much improved thanks to the efforts of the Farsi and Hebrew translation teams, and a mysterious gettext bug caused by certain PHP configurations is now fixed. For IIS users, 2.6.1 fixes several permalink problems. Image insertion problems in the Press This feature experienced by IE users are also fixed. Of note to everyone is a fix for a performance bug in the admin where those with a lot of plugins would experience slowness on some pages.
I have upgraded my blogs but if you are not having trouble there is nort a need.
Well while I was away yesterday WordPress released the new version 2.6.
As soon as I added it I saw something that I love.
It will now let you know if your plugins have updates. A great new feature.
Now to the important thing. All the plugins I recommend work and the upgrade was painless. I will be adding it to each of my blogs as soon as possible.
There were 4 other big changes and a lot of little ones.
Post revisions
Press this!
Shift Gears
Theme preview
The two that really caught my eye though in just a quick glance are the plugin upgrade notice and the theme preview. I will have to play with the others before I can comment on them. The rest of the changes are listed below and are quoted from the WordPress blog.
Word count! Never guess how many words are in your post anymore.
Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.
Bulk management of plugins.
A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.
Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
Plugin update notification bubble.
Customizable default avatars.
You can now upload media when in full-screen mode.
Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default, but you can turn it on easily through the options screen.
Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
Ability to move your wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location, for “clean†SVN checkouts.
Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.â€
You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.
A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.
Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.
Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.
Will be having fun testing some of the new features and will be reporting back in the future.
As always your comments and questions are welcomed.
This is another topic that I get asked a lot so I have put a video on You Tube. If you like these videos and would like to see more of them leave a comment and if you are really kind click over to You Tube and rate it.
Upgrading your WordPress blog is important because like all open source software the hackers are always looking for ways to exploit it. WordPress does a good job of fixing any exploits that they find but if you don’t keep current you don’t stay protected.
Please leave your comments and ask any questions you may have by commenting or using the survey link above.
