Don’t know about you, but some days I start out with what I feel is a simple job, the first one of the day should always be pleasant and straight forward. That kind of sets the tone for the day, hopefully and most days it goes like that. Not today….

If you have anything to do with WordPress, then you will surely know that WordPress 2.8 has been released.  

My advice would be, leave it go a couple of weeks, there are always things that don’t go to plan and 2.8 is no different.

Many will upgrade and have no problems but there will be issues with many others. It seems like there are a couple of plugins that can cause hiccups, like not being able to view the admin/dashboard and/or the site.

It is very tempting now that it is so easy to upgrade, to select the Upgrade option in the tools area but take it carefully.

I would be inclined, if you can’t wait, to deactivate all your plugins before you hit the ‘Upgrade automatically’ and then activate one at a time. Seems like there are a few that don’t want to play the game and from what I have seen, this seems to be the most common problem.

If you do go ahead and upgrade and if you do have problems, then this link may help you out, Troubleshooting and if you do have problems with the plugins and can’t access your Dashboard to get to the plugins area then here is a workaround that I was directed to over on the WordPress Forum. Actually that is a handy one to keep bookmarked for any other occasion that plugins or not accessing your dashboard, may be a problem.

There are some nice looking areas in the dashboard, like if you use Widgets for your sidebars,  much easier to get around.  You can now drag and drop widgets that have been in use and keep the settings.  All the sidebars are visable and you save each widget as you go, so you don’t have to worry about setting up your widgets and forgetting to use the Save changes and losing the Widget and it’s info.

You can now Preview, Activate or Delete a theme from the actual Theme graphic also you can now select what you would like for your theme, like colors, number of columns, column widths, features like, custom headers, theme options, threaded comments etc, just tick the boxes and you will be taken to the search for themes option with all your wanted items already entered.

With the Plugins, there is now an option to group all the plugins that need upgrading automatically.  So when each plugin is successfully upgraded, you return to the list with that plugin removed from the top.

Very neat and very easy, Oh Boy! when I think about how it was to upgrade a plugin, WordPress has come such a long way and it is just great!

So don’t dispair, be patient and the hiccups will be fixed and your WP sites/blogs will once more be a joy to work with.