Category: WordPress

I used to upgrade WordPress manually using FTP. I would update a local copy of the website, make sure everything works on my laptop and then upload it to the server. Not that I don’t trust WordPress automatic upgrade but I am paranoid that my custom plugins and changes will break the site.

However, starting from early 2012 I began to use the upgrade functionality within WordPress. Everything went really well until after I upgraded to 3.5

I wasn’t able to upgrade to 3.5.1 but I was able to upgrade another blog with earlier version than 3.5 to 3.5.1. So I thought it might be a problem with the settings or permissions on this site.

Today, I looked at the issue again. What I found is that there is a discrepancy between the upgrade code and the data returned by API.

The code failed here wp-admin/includes/class-wp-upgrader.php:

111   function download_package($package) {
116     if ( empty($package) )
117       return new WP_Error('no_package', $this->strings['no_package']);
127   }

Called within the same file:

878     $download = $this->download_package( $current->package );
879     if ( is_wp_error($download) )
880       return $download;

There are a lot more tracing done, but ultimately line 878 will always fail because $current does not have the property package:

stdClass Object
(
    [response] => upgrade
    [download] => http://wordpress.org/wordpress-3.6.zip
    [locale] => en_US
    [packages] => stdClass Object
        (
            [full] => http://wordpress.org/wordpress-3.6.zip
            [no_content] => http://wordpress.org/wordpress-3.6-no-content.zip
            [new_bundled] => http://wordpress.org/wordpress-3.6-new-bundled.zip
            [partial] => 
        )
 
    [current] => 3.6
    [php_version] => 5.2.4
    [mysql_version] => 5.0
    [new_bundled] => 3.6
    [partial_version] => 
    [dismissed] => 
)

I wanted to create a Trac ticket but realized that this should have been fixed, and this is a backward compatible issue anyway. Looking at the new code http://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/trunk/wp-admin/includes/class-wp-upgrader.php?rev=24474 I am able to see that the packages properties has been handled.

A quick look at 3.5.1 also suggests that the new data returned has been handled correctly.

   1036     // If partial update is returned from the API, use that, unless we're doing a reinstall.
   1037     // If we cross the new_bundled version number, then use the new_bundled zip.
   1038     // Don't though if the constant is set to skip bundled items.
   1039     // If the API returns a no_content zip, go with it. Finally, default to the full zip.
   1040     if ( $current->packages->partial && 'reinstall' != $current->response && $wp_version == $current->partial_version )
   1041       $to_download = 'partial';
   1042     elseif ( $current->packages->new_bundled && version_compare( $wp_version, $current->new_bundled, '< ' )
   1043       && ( ! defined( 'CORE_UPGRADE_SKIP_NEW_BUNDLED' ) || ! CORE_UPGRADE_SKIP_NEW_BUNDLED ) )
   1044       $to_download = 'new_bundled';
   1045     elseif ( $current->packages->no_content )
   1046       $to_download = 'no_content';
   1047     else
   1048       $to_download = 'full';
   1049 
   1050     $download = $this->download_package( $current->packages->$to_download );
   1051     if ( is_wp_error($download) )
   1052       return $download;

My quick and dirty hack is to edit wp-admin/includes/class-wp-upgrader.php

    878     $download = $this->download_package( 'http://wordpress.org/wordpress-3.6-no-content.zip' );

Just like that, and upgrade was quick. If you’re stuck in 3.5 you can try it out.

Today marks the 10th anniversary of WordPress which was first released on May 27th, 2003.

WordPress now powers countless number of blogs in the Internet via the community driven project WordPress.org and the hosted solutions at WordPress.com.

This site has been running on WordPress since the beginning, in 2005.

Being sick today, I will not be able to make it to any meetups 🙁

I am not going to announce or talk about the release of WordPress 3.1 as I know that most people already know it was released on 23 February 2011. I am also not going to talk about the features.

I would like to share problems that I encountered and how to fix them. Well, I only had 2 problems so far. These are not encountered while upgrading this blog you’re reading.

The first was the problem with no post on the main page. Depending on your theme, it might say, “Sorry no post matching your criteria”. Just after an upgrade, it’s scary to think that all posts are gone. But yeah I still have my backup.

Before you blame WordPress and jump to Blogger or such, you need to check whether you have disabled all of your plugins. Most often plugins are the reason errors occur after an upgrade. In each release, API and functions changes and while WordPress developers try to avoid backward compatibility issues, some of them are just inevitable.

The culprit for my problem was a sticky post plugin. In haste, I deleted all traces of the plugin on the server and in my local disk. Additionally I was working on another machine so I can’t recall the name of that plugin right now.

This was an upgrade from version 2.6. I heard that an upgrade from 2.6 to 2.7 will also produce the same problem by this plugin.

Sometimes, people do get totally blank page. The smartest thing to do is to enable WP_DEBUG in wp-config.php

define('WP_DEBUG', true);

While this line is not available in pre-3, it’ll work if you add it.

It’s also beneficial for the plugin issue I mentioned above. That’s how I found out that there’s a SQL error produced by that plugin.

The next problem I encountered was related to the database version. This might be published somewhere in WordPress documentation but I failed to find it. WordPress 3.1 requires MySQL 4.1.2 and above.

This was a manual upgrade from WordPress 2.8.4 via FTP. The good thing is that the public facing site was still working fine. I was just unable to access the administration dashboard.

By the way, my hosting provider has dedicated database servers with MySQL 4.0 – 5.0 options. 4.0 has been obsolete and this particular blog being upgraded was the only one using 4.0. So all I had to do was:

• Create a new database in the 5.0 server
• Export from 4.0 into a SQL file
• Import into 5.0
• Run the normal database upgrade screen

And everything was hunky-dory. It’s interesting to see that there are less total rows, and the addition of wp_commentmeta table:

Database for 2.8.4

Database for 3.1

If you are on normal cheap hosting with MySQL on the web server itself, you’re out of luck if the server only has MySQL 4.0. It’s time to move away.

So that’s it. Since there are a few more blogs in the upgrade process I might add more findings in this post as I come across them.

WordPress keeps being updated but your themes rarely change unless you’re a theme developer. I wanted to add a leaderboard but I was delaying because I am too lazy to add any custom code to my theme. Silly me I forgot that I have already added an extra “sidebar” when I developed the theme for this website. So all I had to do was paste my code to a text widget and save.

I know we are actually misusing the sidebar via the “dynamic_sidebar” and “register_sidebar” API. It’s fairly straightforward but you do need to have a sense of position in your layout (you need to know where the leaderboard needs to appear).

First we add the sidebar in the /wp-content/THEME/functions.php:

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register_sidebar(array(
	'name' => 'Leaderboard',
	'before_widget' => '<div align="center">',
	'before_title' => '',
	'after_title' => '',
	'after_widget' => '</div>',
));

I think the options are self-explanatory but if you’re confused do ask. One important thing for me is the name – it will be displayed in the widget control panel so it would help to use a descriptive name.

The next file(s) to be edited depends on where you want the new “sidebar” to be located and how the theme are made. A simple standard is that if you want it to be included in all page you just edit /wp-content/THEME/header.php

dynamic_sidebar('Leaderboard');

Normally these are the file name convention used by theme developers:

1. page.php – pages
2. single.php – single posts
3. search.php – search results
4. index.php – the main page

Enjoy!

WordPress 2.6 has been released. Go get WordPress 2.6 now!. Or you can also read the development blog for the complete details.

As everyone might have realized by now, WordPress 2.3 has been released. WordPress 2.3 contains many improvements mentioned in the release page, and one of the most critical change is to the database structure where several database has been removed and added. Relations are all different now, so plugin authors: check your plugins!

What I like is the Plugins/Plugin Compatibility/2.3 page in WordPress Codex. The list is by no means complete, but it’s a good start for you to see if the plugins you are using are effected by changes in 2.3.

My two plugins (Random Posts Widget and Collapsible Archive Widget) were also affected by the change, since I couldn’t find the suitable WordPress function to use for some of the things I needed to do. However I’ve fixed them to be compatible with 2.3 while maintaining backward compatibility to the 2.2.x series.

Please be careful when you download a plugin next time, and see the “Requires WordPress Version” and “Compatible up to” fields.

As for me, since I use a lot of custom plugins and also homemade ones, I’ll need to find the right time to upgrade 😉

How cool is this! WordPress Shop is now selling WordPress red t-shirt worldwide. It’s gonna cost about RM100.00 including shipping for Malaysians. For the rest of the world, the t-shirt costs £9.50 and delivery is £4.50 but if you share with friends the delivery cost would be (£4.00 x Quantity) + X where X is between £0.50 – £0.10 according to my calculations 😉

The t-shirt is of high-quality made by American Apparel. I have to order it soon before the stock is finished!

Have you ordered yours?

So the next weekend I will be flying to San Francisco to attend WordCamp 2007 on 21-22 July. This event is a 2-day conference for WordPress users and developers. The first day will focus on how to be a better blogger, the second on the development and future of WordPress.

Yeah right! Did you believe me? I am sorry I was really imagining how cool will it be if I can attend the event. Maybe next year. 😀

The actual event I will be attending during 21-22 July is my company’s team building activity in Pulau Pangkor, Malaysia. It will be fun (trying to console my own self).