Wordpress Hack #7: Upgrading to a New Version (WP 2.5 Guide)
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Page 4: Wordpress 2.5 Options or “Settings”
Previously your dashboard had a section entitled “Options” which has been moved to the top right in navigation and has been renamed to “Settings”. The main options seem pretty much the same:
What I did find new was under “Settings -> Discussion”, a new section for “Avatars”.
Wordpress now utilizes “Gravatars” or “Globally Recognized Avatars”, and that’s why I saw the picture in the comments earlier when I approved it. The rest of the options seemed pretty much the same to me. As I went through “Plugins”, “Users”, and “Design” (used to be Presentation) I didn’t see any obvious changes other than styling.
This post has multiple pages...
- Wordpress 2.5 Upgrade Guide
- Page 2 - Wordpress 2.5 Dashboard First Impressions
- Page 3 - Wordpress 2.5 Comments
- Page 4 - Wordpress 2.5 Options or Settings
- Page 5 - Wordpress 2.5 Managing Content
- Page 6 - Wordpress 2.5 Writing Content
- Page 7 - Wordpress 2.5 Guide Final Thoughts
- View All
Tags: 2.5, guide, upgrade, wordpress-hacks
April 21st, 2008 at 9:08 pm
My day job is a Test Engineer so I don’t trust developers
. I personally would like to see how my blog fares with major releases by creating a copy of my production blog into a test site and upgrade that test site to WordPress 2.5.
After upgrading, I found out first hand that I had a problem with easy gravatars, lazyest gallery, popularity contest, link harvester, and my own NowThen Photo Display plugin. So many things broke at once. Luckily I was also able debug and fix my blog in the background without visitors seeing all the issues.
I’ve outline the necessary steps to create a test blog here.
It’s totally worth it if you have many visitors to your site.
Thaya Kareesons last blog post..Make WP-PostViews Work with WP-Super-Cache
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:06 pm
A well done guide/review!
Thanks for the notes plugin. I like that. Otherwise I never use the dashboard. This will help me stay a little more organized. . . and lord how I need that.
I’m still not fond of the layout of the menus in WP 2.5. Luckily lighter menus (it’s in the wordpress extensions) plugin has been upgraded to work with 2.5. I like this plugin. It gives you drop down menus–everything one click away.
I do agree with Thaya. I’ve heard a lot of things broke with 2.5 however, since I’m new to wordpress I’ve only installed plugins that are 2.5 ready. I didn’t have much going on in 2.3.3. So things have gone smoothly for me. For those who have a mass amount of plugins, get the upgraded ones. . . if they exist.
That will always be a problem with open source projects. They rely on the community to put a lot of features in via plugin and sooner or later that person will get tired of working on the plugin
One reason I keep my plugins to a minimun.
I think it is a worth while upgrade esp if you don’t have a ton of plugins.
I’ve heard the auto upgrade for plugins can cause problems but it has worked for me flawlessly. . . remember I carry only about 15 plugins
I upgraded to 2.5 just after it came out and it has been working perfectly for me. . . knock on wood!
Charles
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:25 pm
I usually install all the updates on my local machine and tests all the plugins. When I am satisfied with all of the related themes and plugins, I copy all the files to to my live server.
I upgraded to 2.5 and it is working perfectly right for me.
Shafiq Rehmans last blog post..TP-LINK TD-W8920G Wireless ADSL2 Router Review
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:54 am
Nice post….:)
But Instead of doing manual upgradation i recommend to use Automatic Upgrade plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade/)….:D
it’s very easy to use ….and i does all the pre and post upgrade tasks…
I upgraded one of my blog using it and it took me just 1 minute to do upgradation :D
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:11 am
That’s a popular plugin, but one that I would never recommend for most people. You have to check the compatible plugin list every time before upgrading, just to be sure you don’t have a big conflict. If that plugin could do an automatic check of that list before upgrading, I might think about it. For now, the safest way to upgrade is manually…
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:36 am
I would also suggest downloading the xampplite package. It is basically a no install apache / mysql self setup local website.
This gives you the luxury of running your own local copy of your website, so you can test upgrades or code changes locally before uploading for the world to see.
Tarkan
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:13 pm
I really like the local testing idea! I might give that a shot one of these days.