Can't: designate lead image, dismiss notice, make links, tags, etc

here’s a little floating notice about “uploading files and creating image galleries” that will NOT go away when I click on “dismiss” It blocks some important information and access to posts.

Is your wordpress version completely up to date?

I can’t create any links.

Do you mean menu links or links in posts?

There’s no apparent way to designate an image as the lead image so it appears at the head of a post or in the content slider.

There is a featured image spot for wordpress pages and post, look on the right hand column near the bottom.

It assigns it’s own tags, and won’t let me change them.

It won’t accept an “excerpt.”

These could be theme specific changes, you should ask your publisher.

The post’s title or other random parts sometimes disappear when I save a draft.

I’m honestly perplexed to ass why this would happen.

It says “You are using WordPress 3.5.1” to which it was updated a couple of days ago. Is there more to update, and how?

I can’t create links in posts. When I highlight text and click on the “link” icon in the post menu above, nothing happens.

I found the featured image spot on the right hand column, thanks! I have to say the previous method of designating a lead image when uploading it to the gallery was more efficient.

I’ve alerted the publisher to these problems, but I doubt he can get to it until the weekend. So, by “theme specific changes,” do you mean something in the theme’s code is not compatible with the WP upgrade? Would the theme developer have any fixes or patches, and how do I find the developer?

This all began, btw, when the event calendar RSS feed stopped displaying the calendar on the front page. We got an error message “RSS Error: This XML document is invalid, likely due to invalid characters. XML error: Invalid document end at line 16, column 21”

We tried various things, but nothing worked, so the publisher decided it might be solved by upgrading WP.

It says “You are using WordPress 3.5.1” to which it was updated a couple of days ago. Is there more to update, and how?

That is the most uptodate version. Is the link button the only button that isn’t working?

By theme specific I mean that the theme might not be built to use the excerpt box in its functionality, and tags could be autoassigned by the theme or a plugin that you might have installed.

You can contact the theme developer through themeforest.

Is the theme completely up to date as well?

Thanks.

It is only the link button that isn’t working.

One more solved! I checked the plug-ins and as you suggested, there was an auto-tag plug-in that was toggled “on.” I assume this was the result of the upgrade “autoassigning” it, as you say.

I did find a way to insert links – using the menu on the left sidebar. But it takes more mouse and key strokes, not as good as using the link icon on the menu at the top of the post box.

The excerpt box now seems to be working. No idea what the difference is. I couldn’t find a plug-in for it.

Still have that pesky floating notice telling me about the image gallery “whole new look” that won’t go away when I click “dismiss.”