Wordpress upgrade bleg
Posted by Ken Parish on Saturday, April 26, 2008
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Jacques is advising us that we should upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress. He may well be right, but Nicholas and I are nervous/remaining to be convinced. Apparently there are some potential security issues with the version we’re currently running.
Our concern is that just about every previous Wordpress upgrade we’ve installed has created more problems than it solved and led to seemingly endless headaches. Moreover, we’re currently enjoying the only trouble-free run we’ve experienced with Troppo for more than 2 years, and we really don’t want to disturb it unless there’s a compelling reason to do so.
All advice/observations will be gratefully received. What experiences have others had with upgrading to the latest version of Wordpress, which I gather is 2.5.1? Did it create any headaches (especially for those running lots of plugins)? Apparently version 2.5, which was only released a couple of weeks ago, itself introduced a new security flaw into the program, which 2.5.1 allegedly fixes - see what I mean? We’re currently running version 2.3.3, which is working perfectly well and does everything we want. Should we be overly worried about the security vulnerability? Is this like “upgrading” from Windows XP to the markedly inferior Vista? Or should we just cross our fingers and make the jump?
Edit: We’ve jumped the shark. In keeping with Murphy’s Law, my meticulous backing up beforehand has meant that the backups were unnecessary.
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This entry was posted on Saturday, April 26th, 2008 at 7:50 PM and filed under Blegs, Blogging - general, Metablogging, Site News.
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Doesn’t it depend a little on what new features or efficiencies the upgrade brings?
Posted on 26-Apr-08 at 9:20 pm | PermalinkIf it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
Surely Wordpress release security fixes for previous releases as well as a new one?
Posted on 27-Apr-08 at 6:48 am | PermalinkI upgraded. Major improvement.
Posted on 27-Apr-08 at 7:39 am | PermalinkJacques has me on 2.5.1. The only slight inefficiency I have noted compared to the previous version is that for categorising posts it defaults to ‘uncategorised’ and doesn’t automatically uncheck it when you choose something else, forcing me to scroll down and uncheck the ‘uncategorised’ box. Perhaps this can be modified, though I cannot quickly see where.
Posted on 27-Apr-08 at 9:55 am | PermalinkYou have obviously made the image upload facility work. For me, on our new 2.5 upgrade, it is flakey and we haven’t quite finished the transition. Sometimes it simply doesn’t deliver the image URL to the post,and needs several steps, which seem to be a feature rather than a bug. And it doesn’t like to read code I type in directly, rather that use its format buttons. But that is Opera + Mac.
Our experience notwithstanding, most people seem pretty happy with the upgrade.
Posted on 27-Apr-08 at 10:30 am | Permalinkslim;
No: Wordpress do not have separate upgrade streams for features and bugs, with the exception of a 2.0 stream which is maintained by the arch masters of stability in the Debian project.
It’s all or nothing. If you want bug fixes, you have to upgrade. Just one of the many reasons to hate the Wordpress guys.
Posted on 27-Apr-08 at 11:07 am | PermalinkDavid;
There’s a bunch of bugs in the Wordpress bug tracker they marked ‘fixed’ for the 2.5.1 release, including quite a few to do with image uploading. You look like you’re still on 2.5.
Posted on 27-Apr-08 at 11:10 am | PermalinkI upgraded a few weeks ago, and have not had any issues.
For anybody who, like me, has problems controlling font, images and layout when you are posting to a blog, can I suggest you use Live Writer, which is a free Microsoft product.
Posted on 27-Apr-08 at 1:45 pm | PermalinkBased on your say so, Chris, I just downloaded Live Writer and like the look of it. Did a test post, too, which was a doddle, and will experiment further.
PS: Our mate Harby is still king of the castle at idiot central.
Posted on 27-Apr-08 at 2:52 pm | PermalinkMy thoughts go along the standard “not broke, don’t fix” lines. I guess that sounds kind of boring but I don’t like to change something that is working without compelling reasons like critical security issues. Those will get me to upgrade every time.
Posted on 27-Apr-08 at 6:31 pm | Permalink“Not broke, don’t fix” is fine if you have a sensible definition of “broke”.
Posted on 28-Apr-08 at 5:04 am | PermalinkI remember our local rag did an on-the-street interview last October, and it seemed most of the respondents intended to vote for the outgoing government on that very basis, despite being represented by perhaps the most incompetent and illiberal member of Howard’s team.
The trouble with not upgrading is that at some point a nasty automated bot that knows how to exploit the older version of wordpress will find your site and turn it into a porn link bonanza. At that point you either have to go on a deletion marathon or restore from a backup, neither of which seems a better option than the upgrade.
Posted on 28-Apr-08 at 6:43 am | Permalink