As you might have noticed over the last several days, things look a touch different around here. I have actually been working on a revamp of the site, behind the scenes, but the recent upgrade to 2.8 has necessitated that things temporarily change until I can get this new look up, as my current theme is having problems with the upgrade.

There have been several issues with the upgrade and I wanted to highlight a few and make a few suggestions. My thinking is, if someone like me – who has a great deal of confidence when it comes to dealing with technical issues had struggled with the upgrade, then it is highly probable that someone WITHOUT that confidence is right now struggling with the upgrade and wishing they could throw WordPress into a deep lake.

If you haven’t already upgraded to 2.8, the first thing to do is to backup your site. This may seem like a tedious task, but you need to be doing it anyway. Otherwise, you run the risk of losing everything on your blog. Let me say that again: If you don’t back up your blog (regularly), you may lose your entire blog.

Now, some of you may have the Automatic Upgrade plugin. I do, and this was how I upgraded my blogs. And each and every one of them had awful issues when I went back into the dashboard. My dashboard looked like it had been placed in a  blender on puree and then exploded all over my computer. It was a mess.

One of the biggest issues (and this is huge) was that I was unable to edit any of my posts. None. Nada. Zip. I couldn’t see them. This is what I saw in place of my posts, on my “visual” editor:

(click for larger image)

The only way I could view what was there was by highlighting it. Even then, it was in HTML, not WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”).

In my attempts to fix it, I deactivated all plugins, tried various themes and contacted my hosting service (Dreamhost) – to see about reverting to my database with WordPress 2.7.1.

Nothing worked. Finally, I deleted my wp-admin and wp-includes directories and did the “On-Click Reinstall” that my hosting service offers. (Even if your hosting service doesn’t offer this, just download a NEW package/zip file and upload it to your host.) This solution worked and I am able to edit my posts once again.

All of the suggestions below come straight from the WordPress Support Forum, but I’m not sure that people are actually paying attention to this post. It’s a sticky post, and I think people are looking for someone to answer their particular question. I’m pretty sure that most issues will be resolved by using one of the suggestions mentioned.

That said – I am still running into problems with my widgets – I can’t move them around. BUT that is a plugin issue and not a WordPress issue. The authors of each plugin and theme are responsible for making sure their items are compatible with the newest WP version.

If you are having problems, hang in there! Follow the suggestions and steps below. And if you need more help with any of the steps, don’t be shy – Ask away in the WP Support Forum. That is what it is there for, and there are plenty of people offering help.

Insure backups are completed before doing the upgrade
1. See WordPress Backups

Can’t login to deactivate all plugins
1. Read How to deactivate all plugins when not able to access the administrative menus?

Try these things to resolve problems with Visual Editor and editor tool bar
1. Delete or refresh the browser cache

2. If using Gears, disable it and re-enable it again

3. Delete wp-admin and wp-includes directories and upload fresh copies from a new(important) install package or reinstall automatically

4. Visit http://yoursite.com/wp-includes/js/tinymce/wp-tinymce.php and look for any PHP errors or warnings at the top. If there are any try contacting your hosting provider to resolve them or try the next step. Of course replace yoursite.com with your domain

5. Add define( ‘CONCATENATE_SCRIPTS’, false ); near the top of wp-config.php. That would make WordPress admin run slower, so can try removing it in a few days and testing again (this would eliminate any stale network cache)

6. Some people also reported success redoing the upgrade via Tools->Upgrade->Re-install automatically, then clearing the browser cache.

7. A number of plugins have been reported to present problems so deactivate all plugins and reactivate one-by-one to find culprit

8. Try another browser

9. Confirm that Your Profile, “Disable the visual editor when writing”, is NOT checked.

Try these things to resolve problems with Widgets such as not able to drag and drop
1. A number of plugins have been reported to present problems so deactivate all plugins and reactivate one-by-one to find culprit

2. In Appearance->Widgets under Screen options, try the Enable Accessibility Mode

3. Delete or refresh the browser cache

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of xxxxxxxx bytes exhausted
If deactivating plugins doesn’t work try one of these methods for increasing the amount of memory a PHP script may consume

1. If you have access to your PHP.ini file, change the line in PHP.ini
If your line shows 32M try 64M:
memory_limit = 64M ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (64MB)

2. If you don’t have access to PHP.ini try adding this to an .htaccess file:
php_value memory_limit 64M

3. Try adding this line to your wp-config.php file:
Increasing memory allocated to PHP
define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64M');

4. Talk to your host.

Upgraded, can’t login and getting error message
In a few cases, the error message reports what plugin file is causing the problem so rename or delete the plugin folder, then try login again.

A post is repeatedly displayed on the blog’s main page
Likely a problem caused by a plugin so deactivate all plugins and reactivate one-by-one to determine the culprit.

Getting Warning: gzinflate() [function.gzinflate]: data error when doing the upgrade
1. Try redoing the upgrade via Tools->Upgrade->Re-install automatically
2. If that fails, disable all plugins and perform a manual upgrade (see Upgrading WordPress.

Upgrade causing error 500s
1. Deactivate all plugins and redo upgrade.
2. If necessary, perform a manual upgrade (see Upgrading WordPress.

Blank admin pages after login
1. Deactivate all plugins. See How to deactivate all plugins when not able to access the administrative menus?
2. If necessary, rename theme folder in wp-content/themes to cause WordPress Default theme to be place into service

Blank site after upgrade
1. Deactivate all plugins. See How to deactivate all plugins when not able to access the administrative menus?
2. If necessary, rename your theme folder in wp-content/themes to cause WordPress Default theme to be place into service, then see if there’s an upgrade for your theme

Getting Fatal error: Cannot use object of type WP_Error as array
1. Problem has been reported with the Options and Structure theme so look for upgrades
2. Change to the WordPress Default theme if necessary

Tags are not saved
1. If you using hyperdb, make sure to update it.

(photo: jmacphoto.com)