Upgrading WordPress

With this week’s announcement of a new security release for WordPress, 1.5.1.3, consider upgrading your WordPress site. You will find information and details on upgrading WordPress on the WordPress Codex at Upgrading WordPress.

If you are considering the bigger upgrade from a previous older version, like from WordPress v1.2 to the latest version, we have a step-by-step guide that will take you through the upgrade of your site and into the new WordPress Themes at Upgrading 1.2 to the Newest Version.

Volunteers Sought for Fundraising and Publicity for WordPress Activities

Exciting and fun events are coming up in the near future on the WordPress Forum and Codex and we are seeking volunteers to help with the publicity and promotion of these events and future fundraising campaigns. If you are interested in participating, visit the Fundraising and Promotions page on the WordPress Codex and sign up.

To streamline things for everyone, we’ve brainstormed a few changes to the process: Those who are interested in testing should join the wp-testers mailing lists, where they can provide feedback on nightlies. When you join you’ll be sent a special download link on where to find the nightly builds and you can report problems to the list. We still strongly discourage the use of nightlies to power your main, or production blog. Please consider using the nightlies only if you are interested in aiding the development of WordPress by participating in testing. Remember that support requests regarding nightlies will not be entertained in the forums. The wp-testers mailing list is the only place where such discussion is welcome.

If you want to watch WordPress’ development without getting cut by using the bleeding-edge nightlies, we have a new timeline that tracks changes in a nifty web interface.

Hopefully with these changes the support forums can become more focused on helping the most people as possible and not guessing what version people run. Those who truly want to live on the bleeding edge and find and squash bugs now have a real place to discuss the nightlies.

The blurb reads:

Let’s face it. Blogs are in fashion, and why not? Vanity knows no bounds, and there are some people who actually do something productive with theirs. From the influence of blogs on the coverage of the US presidential elections to every random teenager who has problems with their partner/parent/teacher/cat, blogs are out there allowing your most intimate feelings to be shared with random people at wifi hotspots. WordPress is the most prominent rising star of weblog software, completely free and with a large and active community. Styles, plugins and hacks are readily available, with problems such as comment spamming being addressed far more rapidly than competing applications.

Congratulations to the WordPress family!

2004 was defintely the year of the “switcher” for WordPress. May 2005 bring a lot of first-time bloggers to the community. With each succeeding version, WordPress is becoming more user-friendly, less complicated, and more useful.

In other news, the version has been bumped up to 1.3-alpha-5, to reflect some of the improvements made in the past few days, which include lots of bug fixes, and some fine tuning of some of the administration related aspects, themes and the plugin API.

Kai, the maintainer of the WordPress debian package has come out with a debian package for WordPress 1.2.1. If you are a debian user please consider helping by testing the upgraded package as requested in the hackers mail linked to above.

You will find posts from the following blogs at the WordPress Planet:

• Alex King (feed)
• Blogging Pro (feed)
• Dev Blog (feed)
• Donncha (feed)
• Dougal Campbell (feed)
• Kitten’s Project Blog (feed)
• Matt Mullenweg (feed)
• Matthew Thomas (feed)
• Michel Valdrighi (feed)
• Mike Little (feed)
• Ping-O-Matic (feed)
• Ryan Boren (feed)
• Scripty Goddess (feed)
• Weblog Tools Collection (feed)
• Wordlog (feed)

Planet WordPress is powered by Planet, much like Planet Apache and Planet Mozilla.

Now you know where to get your WordPress development fix when this dev blog is silent.

Have fun!

The next version of WordPress will have support for user-defined themes built in. Until now, WordPress used index.php and the comments-files in conjunction with a CSS stylesheet, to control the way it presented the content when published. All other pages, including the category and archive pages were actually generated by passing parameters to the index.php page. The introduction of the theme system does not mean that the old method of styling papges will not work. If you are upgrading from v1.2 or v1.2.1, users have the liberty to continue using their existing design, without switching to the new system. The new Theme system will provide a method for you to define different physical (.php) files for the different components of your weblog. Let us call each of the different physical *.php files a template. So, with the new theme system, you can define different templates for the category archives, the monthly archives, the individual-entry pages etc.

If, as a designer, WordPress user, or developer, you want to get a head start in creating themes, please visit the Theme Development page at the wiki. Now would be a good time to bring any concerns or suggestions you may have regarding the Theme System. You can leave comments at the Theme Development Discussion Page, or discuss it in the hackers mailing list or the beta discussion forum.

Please feel free to improve the pages at the wiki, they are all yours!

Shelley Powers at Burningbird has written several articles detailing her move to WordPress; these are perhaps the most helpful:

• Moving to a New Weblogging Tool discusses her decision to change blogging tools and the factors that led her to choose WordPress.
• Making the Move from MovableType to WordPress details her experience with the process of migration.

Carthik has written a detailed guide for importing your MT entries into WordPress over here.

Last but not least, Gregory Auld at stuff/things has written the first in a series of articles comparing the templating systems of MovableType and WordPress.

THE ISSUES

Nobody likes excuses, however justified. Nor do I like giving them, however justified. We’re all reasonable people here, and I’m sure it isn’t necessary to peevishly point out the fact ad infinitum that we all have lives away from WordPress and blah blah blah. We all know that. The hard fact remains that little has been accomplished with the ‘official’ docs (as opposed to the wiki, which has been steadily updated since its inception) since the release of version 1.0 in early January.

Part of the problem is the rapidly changing face of WordPress itself. The CVS is currently at version 1.2-alpha, with almost daily updates. 1.2, which will be the next official release, is much different from the widely used 1.0.1/1.02 series, and even more different from the still-used .72. There’s new functionality, new template tags, new database tables. This will be a great release, with many of the new features incorporating requests frequently found in the forums (such as subcategories and advanced editing controls).

Up-to-date documentation has always been the weak point of open source (and other) software development. In short, many times the documentation effort simply cannot keep pace with developments in the software. Everybody wants documentation, everybody needs it, but nobody wants to write it. (Including myself, at times.)

WHAT WE HAVE

So what do we have? We’ve got a pretty barebones readme for version 1.0.1. We have the wiki, which now has a useable index thanks to Craig Hartel. And of course we have the forums, which are a treasure trove of useful information in their own right.

Offsite, we have a few resources on miscellaneous topics: Podz has created helpful guides on FTP and CHMOD, as well as a graphical guide to wp-layout.css. NuclearMoose also has an annotated guide to the default style sheet. I’ve written a howto for downloading the CVS here.
Useful stuff, particularly the style sheet guides.

WHAT WE NEED

But what we need is a more comprehensive user’s manual. An updated guide to the template tags; a guide to hacking (should that be plugin-ing?). The user’s manual should contain better instructions on both upgrading from previous versions, as well as detailed guides for importing from other blog systems. (‘Back up your database and run import-xx.php’ leaves something to be desired.) I do have several outlines for such a manual, but have been waiting for the software to stabilize a bit before proceeding. In retrospect, I’m not convinced that this was the best approach. The readme for 1.0.1-.0.2 could certainly stand to be updated in the interim.

We need volunteers to write formal documentation. A good first step for those interested is the docs mailing list, or you can contact me (see my profile for email address.) All that’s required is an ability to write reasonably well. It is not required that you be a WordPress guru, nor a coder. Neither Craig nor I were either (nor am I now) when we became co-leaders of the documentation effort. You just need to write.

I’d also like to see comments from users about what we need. I’m aware that many points have been made in the forums, but let’s start fresh here. I’d like to see specific requests and commentary about what’s weak and what works. Previous comments about the tone of the current docs have been noted (and mostly agreed with), so let’s not devolve into arguments over what constitutes humor. My primary interest is in producing documentation that is useful to both true newbies (which doesn’t assume knowledge; for example, that you know how to backup your database) and advanced users.

Let’s get started over here.

Well, a couple of weeks ago I set out to find the ‘real’ NuclearMoose. I emailed him a few questions, to which he promptly responded.

Here then, is Craig Hartel, otherwise known as NuclearMoose…kind of live and completely uncensored!

Tell us a little about yourself.

I was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, which should not come as a surprise. I moved to the wilds of central British Columbia when I was a brat, and grew up there. Uh, that is to say, I got older there. I now make my home in north-east BC, in a small city called Dawson Creek. No, it is NOTHING like the TV show. I am a GIS technician by trade, working for the BC Forest Service.

I have two sons, aged 13 and 8, and a black Labrador Retriever named Ruby. I have never been to Spain, but I have been to Humptulips, Washington. The stupidest thing I have ever done is cut my head open with a hunting knife which required stitches to close. If you ask me how I did it, I would tell you that I was defending myself from an attacking bear, but I would be lying. Actually, I was trying to kill a house fly but cutting it in half while it was perched on a shelf…I missed the fly, and stabbed myself in the head. [ed note: read the whole story here]. The smartest thing I ever did was have my two sons. While being a single Dad with two growing boys is a challenge, it is the best part of my life.

I have been using computers since CPM 86 was the OS of choice, and I remember the first time I upgraded to MS-DOS and the computer doubled in speed! Yep, an application only took two minutes to load instead of four!

Computers are my hobby, and I have, in the past couple of years, started to try to figure out a way to support myself online rather than doing the 9-5 nonsense. Alas, it eludes me…

When did you first start using WP? What was your prior experience with blogging/blogware?

I lost my bloginity to Blogger in October of 2003. I’ve always wanted to set up and manage my own site, but never got around to it. Blogger had only recently been bought out by Google, so the support and development of Blogger had basically come to a halt. I got up and running quickly with Blogger, but the template system really sucked. I wanted more control, and more features. So, I started to look for others. I was actually a Beta-tester of TypePad, the gee-whiz post a site in no time child of the MovableType family. I liked it a lot, but again, I didn’t want to have a push-button solution. I wanted to learn more. Plus I didn’t want to pay the prices for the service. From there, I picked up on Greymatter, installed it, freaked out over the complexity of it and then decided to drop it as well.

One day, purely by luck, I was Googling, trying to find a publishing tool more to my liking. I came across WordPress, and SCHWING! I was hooked. I turfed my old web host, signed up with a new one, and had WP up and running in November of 2003 in one night. I was amazed at how easy it was to install, and I liked the support forum for the friendly people that were there. I will never look at another publishing program again. WP is my baby, now. I hope to learn more PHP, more DB stuff, and more CSS along the way.

How’d you first start designing the holiday header graphics for the wp.org site?

I love doing graphics. I bought Macromedia Studio MX a couple of years ago, and through my subscription to CommunityMX.com, I learned a great deal about web graphics. I’m a frustrated artist. I can’t draw a conclusion, let alone a nice 3D sphere, but Fireworks allows me to do this and a lot more. It’s not the same tool as Photoshop…it is made specifically for web graphics.

Anyway, I love the tools, and one night I was looking for something to do. I quiet frankly ripped off, uh, I mean, was inspired by Google and how they do fun things with their logo, so I decided to try a few out. I shipped a few of them off to Matt, and he liked them and started to use them. In all, I’ve sent probably a dozen or more to him. I don’t know if we will see all of them or not, but I will continue to do them for my own interest and enjoyment. I hope that the community enjoys them too!

You’re a coleader of the docs team. What are your future plans for docs? Are there other WP projects you’d like to work on?

Well, the WP Documentation project has been a real challenge. I think that the adoption of the Wiki has been a very positive thing for WordPress. Now we need to organise and document it better, so information is easy to find, and we need to promote it better on the support forums. As well, I am starting to work on tutorials for the WordPress site as well. That is to say that I am gathering them together from many sources, and I will be making them XHTML and CSS valid, and Matt will integrate them into the site. This is currently a work in progress, and I have already received some great help from Southern-Gal to start with. Thanks, Sara! You’re a doll!
I work with a great group of people on the documentation team, and I appreciate you all.

What are some benefits of using WP, in your opinion?

The strength of WP is in its design. Standards-compliance is not an easy task, but it makes things a lot easier to integrate and to work with the tools available. It allows the many talented WP community members to contribute their own ideas and solutions to meet the sophisticated demands of the WP users. Not only that, WP right out of the box is easy enough for someone with a modest level of computer knowledge to set up and use. It’s a great way to learn some valuable skills, and you get to meet a lot of fun people along the way. That and when I tell all the Moose-groupies that I’m into WP, they swoon over me like Winnie the Pooh drooling over a pot of honey.

What’s been the best part of the WP experience for you?

Being welcomed into the community and allowed to be an active participant in the development of WP has been great. I’ve made new friends, learned new things, and I get to have a tool set to publish all of my drivel whenever I so desire. What can be better than that?

Is that an antler in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

Why don’t you look in my pocket and see for yourself? Hehe. Actually, as far as moose go, I am a very polite moose. I don’t get mad often, but I will try to trample the occasional troll. I’m here to have fun. If my blog works and looks okay, great, I’m satisfied. Getting to meet lots of cool people like you, Cena, is just a great side-benefit.

Thank you, Craig, for your amusing and enlightening responses. (Humptulip?)

If there’s another member of the WordPress community you’d like to see interviewed (including yourself), feel free to email me with suggestions and comments.