If you are currently looking at the range of sitemap generators specifically available for WordPress blogs, then I can recommend the (free) Google XML Sitemaps plugin – you can download it at www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator . In case you are interested/concerned, it does actually generate valid sitemaps that can be read by MSN, Ask and Yahoo as well, it was written back when Google originally came up with the sitemap standard, hence its name. Oh also, before I forget, if anyone else has had problems with the Bad Behavior plugin being deleted, when you attempt to auto-update from within a WordPress 2.5.x blog, you need to ensure the files are kept within their own folder, and that the old individual PHP file from older versions has been removed from the root of your plugins directory.
Apr 15 2008
Executable PHP Widget And WordPress 2.5
Or more specifically, the possibility of an issue with the Exec PHP Widget and the plugin auto upgrade feature found in WP 2.5
When upgrading this blog to WordPress 2.5, I thought I had tested all plugins thoroughly, however after I auto-upgraded the Executable PHP Widget a couple of days ago, it appears that my widgets were removed from the sidebar, and their contents lost.
So, before upgrading this plugin, it might be an idea to keep a copy of any widget(s) code you have placed.
The next time a new version of this plugin is released, I will check whether simply overwriting the PHP file is sufficient to keep the widget’s contents and placement in the sidebar(s). Part of the issue could have been that the auto-upgrade process first de-activates the plugin, downloads the new version, then re-enables it. This is, of course, the recommended course of action even when manually updating, it is just I’ve not bothered in the past, and so didn’t think to check if the code was still present.
[edit]
I’m also going to need to monitor the Blog Voyeur plugin closely sometime, as I’m not yet convinced it has retained full functionality since this blog was upgrade to 2.5
Apr 10 2008
5 4 3 2 1 – WordPress 2.5 Installation Beginning?
I’ll post details on the fix I found for randomizing the tagline on this site later, but just in case things go wrong, and no new posts appear for a while, I about to upgrade this blog to WordPress 2.5, as I think there are no remaining problems preventing me from doing so.
Famous last words 😉
See the WordPress category page for recent posts on my investigations into this new version of WP, and the testing of plugins used on this blog, as well as the test blog sibling of this site, and my other niche article sites.
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Apr 09 2008
Bad Behavior 2.0.14 And WordPress 2.5
Looks like I spoke a little too soon…
I noticed that Bad Behavior 2.0.13 had been updated by the plugin’s authors, and so attempted an automatic upgrade (part of the improvements with WP 2.5), and was greeted with
Downloading update from http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/bad-behavior.2.0.14.zip
Unpacking the update
Deactivating the plugin
Removing the old version of the plugin
Installing the latest version
Installation failed
Not exactly the end of the world, and once I realised that the core file ( bad-behavior-wordpress.php ) had been deleted during the process (normal behaviour), I didn’t worry about it no longer appearing in the list of plugins available for activation. I uploaded the file, and then overwrote the original associated updated bad-behavior directory, and proceeded to activate it with no problems.
So, assuming you take the time to read any messages during attempting an automatic upgrade of plugins, no harm is done 🙂
btw, this is the first plugin I’ve found that did not like the upgrade process…
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Apr 09 2008
19-1 In Favour Of WordPress 2.5
As previously mentioned, I upgraded the test blog brother of this site to WP 2.5 recently, and other than a few small issues all went well. I therefore decided to take the plunge and upgrade a further eighteen of my sites yesterday. All seemed to go well, with no themes suddenly broken, and as I’d already tested their plugins on the test blog, no issues there either. The upgrade process went smoothly, though I did ensure I had both exported XML files for backups on each blog, as well as downloading the SQL table backups before starting each upgrade.
Now all I need to do is wait for the Random Tagline plugin author to not update his code (no response from e-mailing him, and the site appears to not have been touched in a little over a year), or just skip that and go ahead with upgrading this blog now. Can anyone else recommend an alternative to WP Random Tagline?
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Apr 02 2008
Further Testing Of Plugin Compatibility With WordPress 2.5
As previously mentioned, I have used my sacrificial lamb test blog to check how things would go if I upgrade all my other blogs to WordPress 2.5 . From previous experience I know that updating WP can cause problems, and if core parts of your site rely on certain plugins, if the plugins no longer work, you can end up with a real head ache.
So, having compiled a list of all the plugins I use across the various blogs, I installed each to test.chrismerriman.com, and then checked that their functions (both in-post, background and sidebar-based) still, well, functioned.
I am happy to report that the following plug ins continued to work as expected with WordPress 2.5 : 404 Notifier, Bad Behavior, Blog Voyeur, Comment Referrers, Different Posts Per Page, Easy IP2Country, Executable PHP widget, FeedBurner FeedSmith, Fuzzy Recent Comments, Google XML Sitemaps, randomimage, runPHP, ShareThis, Subscribe To Comments, WordPress Automatic Upgrade, wp-GotLucky, wp-headlineanimator, WP-UserOnline, WP-UserOnline Widget and Zap_NewWindow
However, Fuzzy Widgets, Sticky Post, WP Random Tagline all have issues of varying importance.
Fuzzy widgets – The widget title is not displayed correctly
Sticky post – Must be disabled for the blog to display
WP Random Tagline – The tagline is displayed in extra white space inserted above the blog, and minor admin issues when enabled/disabling
I’ll be updating you with further info if/when the authors update their code, and I notice 😉
Mar 30 2008
WordPress 2.5 Early Reactions – Sticky Post + WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugins
[UPDATE AT END OF POST]
OK, I have upgraded my test blog site to WordPress 2.5, to see if any problems occur with my current plugins etc., before committing myself to upgrading my 19 other blogs.
It would appear that a couple of things may be of interest to others…
1) Using the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin, the process bombed out at the ‘cleanup stage’. To clarify, the upgrade proceeded as normal, but the procedure halted when the process attempted to delete its temporary files. I was able to continue (WordPress had me login in again), click on the Manage link, go to Automatic Upgrade, and finish off the process successfully (AFAI can tell). Go here for the general plugin page, and here for the latest update info.
2) The Sticky Post plugin (previously found at http://blog.vishalon.net/Post/88.aspx, though that page is now removed or perhaps the permalink structure over there changed?), that enables you to keep a specific post on the front page for as long as you want, without constantly fiddling the time stamp, appears to be temporarily broken by WordPress 2.5 . I suspect this was due to code changes within WordPress that deal with handling which posts should be displayed. If you have the plug in installed, upgrade to WordPress 2.5, and find that none of your posts appear, along with an error of WordPress database error: [Table 'wp_posts' from one of the SELECTs cannot be used in global ORDER clause] at the top of your page, login as normal, and deactivate the Sticky Post plugin.
( SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_posts.*, 2 AS N FROM wp_posts WHERE 1=1 AND wp_posts.post_type = 'post' AND (wp_posts.post_status = 'publish' OR wp_posts.post_status = 'private') ) UNION ALL ( SELECT wp_posts.*, 1 AS N FROM wp_posts INNER JOIN wp_postmeta ON wp_posts.ID = wp_postmeta.post_id WHERE wp_posts.post_status = 'publish' AND wp_posts.post_type = 'post' AND wp_postmeta.meta_key = 'STICKY' AND wp_postmeta.meta_value = '1' ORDER BY wp_posts.post_date_gmt DESC LIMIT 1) ORDER BY N, wp_posts.post_date DESC LIMIT 0,10
I still want to carry out further testing before upgrading my other blogs, but I’m reasonably happy, so far at least.
For further info on the final release of WordPress 2.5, see here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
[UPDATE]
See this post for further details on plugin compatibility testing with WordPress 2.5
Mar 01 2008
All Addresses Fixed
All posts, pages, comments and even internal trackbacks have now been updated to reflect the new permalink structure recently adopted at this blog. Sometime I’ll try googling the old link style, and leaving comments on the relevant sites/blogs, but internally at least, there should be no more bad links leading to a 404 type results 🙂
Feb 27 2008
WP-GotLucky Problem Sorted
I recently got around to creating the required SQL tables for this plugin to function. I had a problem though, where I was not being e-mailed the results when somebody found my site from searching for a specific term. I tried a few different approaches, but couldn’t get the code to work.
oooops.
I actually got around to checking the script code properly today.
Of course the plugin wasn’t e-mailing me results, I hadn’t uncommented the specific line 🙂
For anyone else running up against this problem, remove the // symbols from the line that starts mail(get_settings('
I’m now being e-mailed, and the RSS feed still works. Whilst the feed is a lot quicker to access (its set in FireFox as one of my RSS locations to check), it is useful to have an archive of previous search terms that this site appeared in – apart from anything else, it is one way of letting me know the reason people arrived here (at least from Google, that is).
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Feb 27 2008
WordPress In Kazakh !
I meant to post about this a while back, but as you may have already guessed from the title, the WordPress software that this blog is based on is now available in the Kazakh language. Whilst it is likely that 99.9%§ of people who will be installing WordPress on a server are already able to speak Russian, and therefore use that pre-existing version, the fact that the option is now there for those that want a Kazakh interface, is definitely a good thing. Check out the semi-official news release here.
§ – Did you know that 64.7% of statistics are made up?
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