I keep falling for it. Each time there is a Wordpress version update, I cannot resist upgrading. Mostly because I hate seeing the message that “there’s a new version of Wordpress, please update!” message. It makes me feel as though my version is old.

However, each time I upgrade I end up spending an hour trying to fix the bugs that make Wordpress work EXACTLY the way I wanted it to work BEFORE I upgraded! Hmmmm! Something is wrong with this equation! I upgrade so I can spend an hour making my blog look exactly the way it was before I upgrade.

Anyway, if you have upgraded to Wordpress 2.5.1 do check that your RSS feeds working properly! What I discovered was that my RSS feed was completely empty even though I have been publishing posts. This was very troubling because I use FeedSmith to redirect all my feeds to Feedburner. If you go to my original feed at www.brianwong.com/blog/rss2.php you will see that the feed reports ZERO posts on my blog despite all my posts!

The fix?

Well I discovered that my feed at www.brianwong.com/blog/feed still works. So this is what I had to do to get back online:

1. Disable the FeedSmith plugin
2. Edit my RSS source in Feedburner from www.brianwong.com/blog/rss2.php to www.brianwong.com/blog/feed

So the next time Wordpress comes up with the message ” “there’s a new version of Wordpress, please update!” will I upgrade??

Sigh! I guess I am a sucker for punishment, I think I would still do it.

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If you are a Wordpress user, you will be aware that Wordpress 2.5 has been released. So I got tired of seeing the “Your Wordpress is out of date” message every time I log into my dashboard - and thus decided to upgrade. Now, I’ve upgraded 3 versions of Wordpress before with no problems so I assumed the same will be for this version.

The easiest way to upgrade your Wordpress version is to use the “Automatic Wordpress Upgrade” plugin. This plugin automatically backsup your blog, de-activates your plugins, puts your site into maintenance mode, downloads the latest version of Wordpress (in this case 2.5), upgrades your database, re-activates your plugins and completes the update.

However, after I completed the upgrade process, I was in a panic as my blog sidebar displayed a “Fatal Error”. Turns out, the very popular “Popularity Contest” plugin is incompatible with Wordpress 2.5! Fortunately, it was easy to fix. For those having problems with the Popularity Contest plugin after upgrading, here’s what to do:

1. Deactivate the plugin (it would most likely be deactivated)

2. Get the latest version here: Popularity Contest

3. Open “popularity-contest.php” and replace the following:

Replace require(’../../wp-blog-header.php’); with require(’../wp-blog-header.php’);

4. Upload the edited file to your Plugins directory

5. Activate the plugin

That ought to fix the Fatal Error.

So what do I think of Wordpress 2.5, well… the jury is still out. I am a little uncomfortable with it at the moment because of the major interface change. However, I do see a lot of improvement too in the way we manage posts, add media and also other improvements like the ability to track incoming links from other blogs. Here’s what the new admin interface looks like:

For all you Wordpress bloggers out there, I hope you had an easier time upgrading!

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