Interactive Llama

I upgraded the poetry knook today from WordPress 2.1.3 to 2.3. Including backing up the database and user files, the process took about an hour. Be sure to follow the upgrade steps (in order!). I have heard that logging into administration during an upgrade can cause problems.

WordPress 2.3, which was released back in September, includes among other things: a native tag system, plug-in and platform upgrade notification, post management interface improvements, roll your own dashboard, and roll your own RSS libraries. Many of these items have been addressed by plug-ins. Tagging especially comes to mind. I love Ultimate Tag Warrior and use it on all my blogs.

But I have to say goodbye to Ultimate Tag Warrior (well, not really, I hear there’s a UTW hack compatible with WordPress 2.3), because, as in all platforms, the best third party features eventually get implemented by the parent company. I recommending reading, How to Switch from Ultimate Tag Warrior to WordPress 2.3 Tagging, if you currently use Ultimate Tag Warrior and are upgrading to 2.3. I still had errors and installed UTW Theme Compatibility Thing but it did not work for me in listed related posts. For my related posts, I installed WordPress 2.3 Related Posts Plugin, since I couldn’t get UTW’s related posts tag to work.

As for mass editing and management of tags in WP 2.3, I am liking the features of Simple Tags. I have not used their tag clouds and related posts features however.

I think it took about as long to install WP 2.3 as it did to write this post, so check your plug-ins’ compatibility and then upgrade!

CUSTOM THEME NOTES:

Sounds easy doesn’t it? Well, not exactly if you use a customized blog and do not just download an upgrade ready-to-wear theme. You will need to change out all your UTW tags to WordPress tags (at the time of posting, this wiki is incomplete). Below are specific items I had issues with when upgrading:

• Be sure to update your tags.php with the native WP tags instead of the UTW tags–although with the UTW Theme Compatibility Thing plug-in, you should be able get away with not changing these tags. There are no where near as many options with the native tags, so you may have to change the format of the tags in your blog.
• I have had problems with the Dagon Design Sitemap Generator plug-in since the category database schema has changes. Update to the latest version to fix this.
• Unlike UTW’s use of the tag.php for listing posts filed under a tag. The native tagging system of WordPress 2.3 uses the archive.php (just like viewing a category). Takes a glance at the code of /wp-content/themes/default/archive.php in order to customize your “Posts Tagged with ????” pages. It took me a while to figure this out in my customized themes.
• I suggest creating a mod_rewrite entry in your .htaccess similar to “RewriteRule ^tag/(.+)$ http://www.example.com/archives/tag/$1/ [R=301,L]“, since tags will now be under the URL set for permalinks in the Options menu (e.g.- http://www.example.com/archives/tag/)
• According to the Wp 2.3 ChangeLog, there are deprecated functions you will need to update in your template. Template tag permalink_link() has been deprecated in favor of the_permalink(); permalink_single_rss() has been deprecated in favor of the_permalink_rss().
• I like to use variable font sizes (i.e.- ‘em’ instead of ‘pt’) for accessibility issues. The WordPress 2.3 tag, wp_tag_cloud, has problems with the unit, ‘em.’ Use ’smallest=1&largest=1.01&unit=em’ for the parameter to keep all the tags the same size.