tripwire magazine

Wordpress version 2.8 was release on June 10th and everyone using earlier versions is probably earger to get the new features. In addition to over 790 bugs fixes, there are improvements in themes, widgets, taxonomies, and overall speed. The question is whether there are any low hanging fruits making it attractive to be an early mover. Upgrading should not be hard but it depends on several things fx. the theme and plugins being used, if you made custom changes to core modules etc. You can read the full list of over 180 new features, changes, upgrades, and improvements on the Codex.

In order to really know how smooth the upgrade proces would be I decided to just get started and upgrade tripwire magazine right away. Since you’re reading this you know that it went OK. This article provides essential information on how to get started upgrading to Wordpress 2.8, what benefits upgrading will give you and what you need to be careful about.

Before you upgrade

This section provides tips on how to make sure your site will not break after an upgrade.

Plugin compatibility

Plugins Compatibility is probably the most important thing that you need to consider before upgrade your Wordpress to 2.8 version. You may run into trouble if you rely on plugins that have not recently been updated.  If just one of your plugins is not compatible with Wordpress 2.8, it may crash the whole blog! Wordpress 2.8 Codex provides a checklist that list out plugins that have been tested for compatibility with Wordpress 2.8. This could certainly be worth to investigate in details.

Besides the Wordpress codex, BraveNewCode also provides a Wordpress Plugin Compatibility Checker that has quite detailed information about the requirements for each plugin. You should not panic id Max WP is not set to 2.8 for all the plugins you’re using as BraveNewCode have decided to use a relly hard judgement. I’m using TDO Mini Forms and it seams to work very well even though it have elements that may not be compatible above WP 2.5. So this is mainly to get a detailed insight to the possible compatibility issues you may face. Don’t turn away from WP 2.8 based alone on this tools!

Theme compatibility

Having checked that your plugins are compatible, you should proceed and verify whether your theme it is compatible with Wordpress 2.8. WP2.8 is generally backward compatible why it is most likely that your theme will be work just fine with Wordpress 2.8. One exception to this is if your theme comes with a lot of features that use wordpress action hooks and filters extensively. If you’re using a premium Theme you should just consult the vendor site and see if there is an update awailable or any news on when and how to upgrade. If you downloaded a Theme through Wordpress.ord you may be lucky that your theme have been tested for compatibility with Wordpress 2.8 already.

For those who are using premium/custom theme, you may need to consult the theme author.

Backup, and use test site for optimal safety

Ok I was not taking any risks at all as it would be unacceptable to risk major problems on tripwire magazine just because I wanted to write an article about WP2.8. I’m using Bluehost for hosting and it is still providing good performance for tripwire magazine even though daily hits have been climbing rapidly. Besides that Bluehost is unlimited hosting and I can create as many sites, databases, domains/subdomains, etc. as I need. This is really an advantage when facing an upgrade like in this case. I simply created a full copy of the tripwire magazine website by:

1) Making a copy of all files on my webserver using the instant on server copy through the web-based file manager.

2) Creating a test subdomain to access this new website. This really just takes a few clicks in the cpanel interface.

3) Exporting the entire database and importing it onto a new test database. I did this using phpMyAdmin Export/Import and by following the official Wordpress guide.

In order to make it work I added the mysql account used when accessing the tripwire magazine database to the new test database. Reason for this approach was that I effectively made a database copy and need to use the same user because the password is encrypted in wp-config.php.

4) Updating the define(’DB_NAME’, ‘<database name>’); in wp-config.php to point at the new test database. This is an very important step as you dont want to upgrade the production database by mistake….!

4) As Wordpress under “General Settings” requires to know the WordPress address (URL) you can’t log into the admin part unless you change it to the new subdomain. This information is the table wp_options and  I used phpMyAdmin to update the data base row.

Once the new test instance was running I simply pressed the upgrade button in the WP admin area on the test instance. In five to ten seconds WP responded that it had been upgraded. After logging in I could access the new WP2.8 Dashboard.

Having the test website allowed me to see that all the basic stuff was working. One of the challanges in this situation with WP is that it doesn’t use relative URLs. This means that clicking on links takes you back to the main site and that fx. images are loaded from there as well. Testing a few things went ok and then I decided to go forward with the upgrade on the real site.

You may also want to follwo the official Wordpress upgrade manuel and download the files yourself, use FTP to upload the files and run the upgrade script manually.

Upgrading to WP2.8

Before you upgrade you Wordpress you should always make a full backup! Having a back on the other hand does not give you any guaranties that you can restore it. The process of creating a test instance of your site is a great way to ensure that if something really breaks during upgrade you can atually get back on track because you have all the elements collected and tested them togehter. The Bluehost cpanel interface also allowed me to inititate a full website back that is located on the server for download once it has finished. It contains everything from files to databases – really useful.

I then logged into tripwire magazine WP backend and pressed the upgrade to Wordpress 2.8 button. In a few seconds it was upgraded with no warnings or errors. Backend seamed to be working just fine.

I went to the front end and Ups. I’m using %tag% in permalinks and I found out the hard way that this still isn’t supported out of the box in Wordpress 2.8. I didn’t realise that this could be a problem in the test system, and this just indicated that I should have spent more time testing! The site was effectively down for a few minutes, until I had found the right case on wordpress.org/support/and reapplied it to the site core WP files. Make sure you dont make the same stupid fault. Except from this minor issue I have experienced no compatability problems so far or indications that WP2.8 was released to early. All plugins work as expected (even the fluency admin theme plugin), my theme still looks the same. Wordpress did a great job.

What news did WP2.8 have in the box

Theme Installer

Wordpress 2.7 introduced the Plugin Installer, which make installing plugins very quick and easy. In Wordpress 2.8, we get a similar feature for uploading, installing and managing Themes. This about time as this type of functionality have been around for a long time in systems like Joomla.

There are different options available on how to get new Thems installed. Some will love the new theme browser where you can search for themes and install them without leaving the Wordpress admin interface.

Others will prefer to download the themes themselves from other sites and then use the new upload and install feature.  

Upload was tested and it worked!

Preview and activate is available once it has been installed. This is really cool feature as it saves us for the proces of uploading and unpacking the themes manually.

Improved Themes Management

With the brand new Themes Management System, you can easily activate/preview/delete the theme by using the links provided. You dont need to preview anymore to be able to activate.

Improved Theme/Plugin Editor with functions lookup and syntax highlighting

There are significant improvements in this area and if you are planning to edit your files online within the WP admin interface you will love this new functionality. The features available will make it possible and convenient to edit files online.

Improved Tags Management System

Wordpress 2.8 has a very similar Tags Management System compared to previous versions. The main difference within 2.8 and previous versions is the new Tag description, which make it acts like a category.

Get more details here on how to use Tag descriptions in WordPress 2.8

Improved Widgets Management

The new widgets management now list out all the sidebars awailable in the theme. In the previous version you had to select the sidebars from the drop-down list.

Besides this, the new widgets management also adds a box called Inactive Widgets, which is the place where you can put you widgets aside, but still want to keep their settings for future use. This is a great feature as you may want to take a widget offline a few days without beeing forced to set it up from scratch.

Edit Comments from the Edit Post page

I’m not sure this will be used by most bloggers as it is common to write new posts instead of updating existing ones. Anyway in Wordpress 2.8, you will be able to view and edit comments while you are editing a post. The comments are placed in a separate box and can be moved up if you want it just below the post text area. From here you can now easily approve, unapprove, spam, delete. edit. and reply the comment without leaving your post.

Custom taxonomies in WordPress 2.8

In WordPress 2.3, the new taxonomy API was introduced. It allowed us to make up our own taxonomies but no one really  has been using custom taxonomies until now.

In WordPress 2.8, creating custom taxonomies won’t even be the job of a plugin developer. Average users can make and use any taxonomy they want with a few lines of code. WordPress will handle the rest by adding the meta boxes on the write post page and new admin menus for managing them. Read more here and learn how to create your own custom taxonomy

Extending WP 2.8

The complete guide to creating widgets in WordPress 2.8

In this tutorial, Justin Tadlock walk you through the steps of setting up a widget, its settings form, and displaying it on your site. At the end of the tutorial, you can download an example plugin to build from. Of course, you can apply this to your themes as well.

Build a WordPress 2.8 Widget with New Widget API – WPEngineer

WPEngineer Michael Preuss walks you through the new simpler Widget API in WordPress 2.8 to create a simple widget. Very simple and easy to understand tutorial.

Tutorial on WordPress 2.8 Widget API – Jesse Altman

Another easy to understand hello world tutorial on working with new WordPress widget API.

WordPress 2.8 and body_class() function – Nathan Rice

WordPress 2.8 supports location-specific classes for body tag with which you can control the looks of almost everything with just CSS.

Load JavaScript Files in Footer of Your Theme – Lester Chan

Now you can make your WordPress blog faster by loading JavaScript files in the footer. Lester Chan explains how to do that in WordPress 2.8

Displaying Author Meta Information in WordPress 2.8 – Zach Dunn

WordPress 2.8 include two new functions the_author_meta() and get_the_author_meta() to display information about authors. Zach Dunn explains how to use these new functions in your WordPress theme.

Handling Plugin Options in WordPress 2.8 – PlanetOzh

WordPress 2.8 includes interesting register_setting() function that lets plugin authors leave the dirty stuff to WordPress and concentrate on the functionality of plugin.

WordPress Proxy Support – WP Engineer

If you are using WordPress on your local network which is behind a proxy, then now you can easily fetch content from other websites or RSS feeds as WordPress 2.8 requires just a little edition to wp-config.php to work behind a proxy.

9 Ways to Set Dynamic Body IDs via PHP and WordPress

When designing sites, it is often useful to identify different pages by adding an ID attribute to the <body> element. Commonly, the name of the page is used as the attribute value, for example:

<body id="about">

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