Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Upgrading a blog to Wordpress 2.3 and Changing your tags

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 an 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.

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.


-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

You may view the latest post at
http://www.smjdesign.com/designwell/archives/upgrading-a-blog-to-wordpress-23-ultimate-tag-warrior-tagging-tags/

Upgrading a blog to Wordpress 2.3

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 an 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. For my related posts, I installed WordPress 2.3 Related Posts Plugin, since I couldn’t get UTW’s related posts tag to work.

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!



-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

You may view the latest post at
http://www.smjdesign.com/designwell/archives/upgrading-a-blog-to-wordpress-23/

Sunday, December 02, 2007

HTML standards in email clients: Oh, the horror!

A new HTML standards for email clients advocacy site has sprung up. It’s called Email Standards Project. I sincerely hope that it is able to make a difference. I’ve personally had issues with the major discrepancies in email clients at my job. I’ve heard that Microsoft Outlook 2007 is unfortunately using the Word HTML engine instead of the Internet Explorer Engine. The full list of clients that are on the Average or Poor list are:

This is based on their acid test. If you are involved in developing internet applications or sites and aren’t familiar with acid tests (and you should be!), visit WebStandards.org for the web browser acid test.

So what’s a person to due in the mean time–structural tables and inline CSS, of course! That’s what! So barbaric and so 1999! Here is a tutorial on what HTML/CSS you can use across multiple email clients.



-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

You may view the latest post at
http://www.smjdesign.com/designwell/archives/html-standards-email-clients-outlook-2007-gmail/