Ok, so it appears I’m going to have to build a new wordpress 2.0 blog from complete scratch — which sucks. The 1.5.x data appears to be full of cruft and causes untold grief in wp 2.0 (doubly so as I use ‘tags’).
A real catch 22:
1.5 db + tags + categories + upgrade = failed mess.
1.5 db - tags + categories +upgrade = another nasty mess.
1.5 db - tags - categories + upgrade = fully fucked up mess.
.. spot the pattern yet? Lets not forget the mangled wreak that was fauna under 2.0 either - I can’t help but feel some of the issues have occurred due to the db version change, as template code that was perfectly valid in 1.5 refused to pull data out of the 2.0 db correctly, or certain template tags failed to operate as expected within “the loop”, even when valid data was being parsed from/to the db to work within.
Changes within 2.0 aren’t just cosmetic, again this isn’t news to anyone following 2.0’s progress - however I believe the sheer scope of the changes will become apparent as upgradee’s start to deviate from the standard loop and discover all sorts of cool new things that break. :)
Converting the categories <--> tags has at some point added some inconsistencies that only appear after a db upgrade, thus I’ll leave the blog a 1.5 for now & start a ‘day one’ blog under 2.0 - once that’s solidly bedded down then I can import ‘chunks’ of the existing (working) content back in, which should allow for greater consistency checks..
At some point over the next few days I’ll endeavour to pull some of the more recent posts from the previous 2.0 db and import them in. Apologies for the somewhat shit posting continuity. :)
≡ This is a journal entry relating to the topics of code, noteworthy, wordpress.
Brendan Borlase is a Systems and Network Administrator living in Adelaide, Australia, having lived, worked and breathed Information Technology for over 12 years. Learn more.
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Dec 29th, 2005 at 1:13 pm
Just keep on having problems ahead of my upgrading. You’re my guinea pig. I don’t think I’ll update till the 12th of Jan. By then, with luck, I’ll have a nifty new design to show off as well.
Dec 29th, 2005 at 5:08 pm
Thanks for that Chris - makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. :)
I swear if you try and make me run in one of those circular.. ehm, round, running things, I’ll be.. erm, something.
Yes - things are not exactly all tickety-boo in the wp 2 department.. I’ve got a few things to try, but it ain’t gonna be with the existing blog - oh no.
Dec 29th, 2005 at 8:24 pm
I, too, am glad with Brendan as our guinea pig. I’m holding off upgrading until someone shows me a fully working upgrade (within my scope) ;)
There are some several people working on the bugs that pop up as we speak, gladly.
Dec 29th, 2005 at 9:18 pm
Good call. It appears if one has a fairly “stock” wordpress install (and that is likely going to be a high percentage of the installed user base still) things will more or less work okay.
Deviate away from a stock version - throw in tags and a few other similar concepts that turn wordpress into a damn fine product, and the upgrade is going to break something. Again, it’s not going to be until folks who tinker under the hood attempt an upgrade (I’m barely even in that league - I have much to learn) that the scope of differences between 1.5 and 2.0 will become (painfully) apparent.
To quote (sort of) that somewhat weak British tv show “Braniac”:
“incoherently surreal - breaking wordpress, so you don’t have too.”
Dec 30th, 2005 at 8:48 am
I upgraded mine by emailing my DB to myself with the wp-backup plugin then importing it into a new DB (I couldnt find a simple duplicate DB option in phpmyadmin) then installing WP2 on a fresh database as stock in a new subdirectory and importing the backed up one into that new database.
Then I copied over my theme and installed plugins one by one.
It seems to work ok, the only problem I have it is doesnt seem to remember name/url/etc in the comment form.
Dec 30th, 2005 at 8:56 am
That’s nuts.
Obviously it worked - but theoretically you’ve got a new version db with non-upgraded data in it.. yikes.
Either that or I read it wrong.. :)
Dec 30th, 2005 at 10:26 am
No, I DID upgrade it, I just forgot to mention.
The main reason for doing it that way was just to ensure I had the original DB entact. I also ran the WP2 blog for a few days, whilst checking plugins etc, before switching over.
Dec 30th, 2005 at 7:42 pm
Are you using a tag plugin at all - like UTW ?
Dec 31st, 2005 at 10:14 am
yup, utw
Jan 1st, 2006 at 1:50 am
.. this just in — it works.. sort of.
Managed to get the db to upgrade without the tagged category issue rearing it’s ugly head.. live archives still seems broken, but that may be a plug-in issue. Everything else is groovy.
A few more tweaks and I can roll the blog over to 2.0 (finally). :)