Over the weekend I updated my blog to WordPress 2.8. It’s been a relatively smooth process complete screw-up (see my comment at the bottom) although I lost my archive and recent post widgets as I had hacked them to be multiple instance. As they are now multiple instance anyway (hurrah) I was able to remove the extra code and get everything back working properly.
So far I haven’t taken too much time to dig around but I am definitely liking the new widgets interface. I have several different sidebars (for the homepage, footer, single page, page, etc) so not having to remember to save it and then switch sidebars to make multiple changes is much, much slicker. I’m really looking to experimenting with the new widgets API as well – I’ve got a few ideas for widgets, but if anyone reading this has ideas feel free to shoot them at me :)
On the other hand, I really dislike the new plugins interface. Having them all in one long list without a clear indication of which ones are active or inactive is really confusing, especially when you use a lot of plugins like me! I much preferred the old design with sections, where all active plugins were at the top.
Has anyone else had problems with using the widgets interface in Firefox? At first I thought it was either my connection or my hosting, but it works fine in chrome, itjust freezes in Firefox, along with gmail. It’s very frustrating as although I love chrome, I really miss my delicious, evernote, firebug, and other plugins!
Update: Is it me or is tagging not working in WordPress 2.8? I’m completely unable to add tags to this post!
Update 2: It wasn’t me, it was DB Cache. Apparently that plugin causes the tagging issue along with hyperdb another DB caching plugin. Hope it’s fixed soon, but for now I can disable whilst I edit and then re-enable – fiddly but workable!
14th Jun
Duncan says:
2.8 has some great new features but the things im finding a bit irritating is the lag, when changing pages in the interface and a BIG lag when adding widgets. Im using FF3, I did try to use Chrome but Chrome wasn’t displaying the syntax highlighting.
Im not sure if its FF making it so slow, sounds like it could be if your having the same problemos.
14th Jun
ErisDS says:
I’ve had Firefox freeze and/or crash on me so many times in the last few weeks both at work and home (so two separate PCs). I couldn’t get the widget interface to work at all (it just freezes). I also noticed gmail has started to freeze from time to time.
I don’t know if it’s a FF update or maybe one of my plugins, but I don’t have obscure plugins. There’s definitely also a memory leak – I have to restart FF every couple of hours as it starts going really slow. Guess I should try disabling all my plugins.
Talking of plugins, what do you think of the new WP plugins interface? Love, like or loathe?
14th Jun
Duncan says:
Iv had similar frequent crashes with FF of late. FF recently updated and (touch wood) I have not had a crash since!
A month ago FF was playing up and after a while of it running multiple tabs it would start hogging a massive 1 1/2 gig of RAM!!!
I managed to fix it by uninstalling a few add-ons I wasnt using and turning of ones I only use for SEO – all seems better now although I notice that it eats more memory the longer it stays open. When it starts slowing down I just close it then reopen it (iv got a session manager so it saves my tabs), that works ok.
I agree that the WP new plugin interface is clunky, they could have made that loads better. I prefer the old one to be honest.
14th Jun
ErisDS says:
Very glad I’m not the only one who prefers the old plugins interface!
As for FF, it really does seem to be getting quite unstable and a little bit sucky :(
14th Jun
ElanMan says:
I must have a blessed existence as I’ve had no problems with the update at all (5 separate blogs).
I really like the syntax highlighting/line numbers; makes it so much easier to locate relevant css through Firebug.
Have to agree about the plugin page though. Just seems like a long, rambling list. Much preferred the old plugin interface.
As for Firefox, I’ve always found v3 to be very buggy. Recently however, it seems to be running remarkably smoothly?
Of course now, I feel like I’ve tempted fate :)
14th Jun
ErisDS says:
Check my addition at the bottom of the post – I’ve just realised WordPress is refusing to save my tags, so I can’t add any to this post or other posts I’m working on :(
Elanman you are a lucky bugger! If I send you a list of plugins I’m using could you perhaps tell me what ones you aren’t using so they can be isolated as a potential cause?
14th Jun
joelwallis says:
I can’t think why don’t you like the new Widgets panel. This was for me the best improvement at the new version. Other CMS have good support to frond end components, like Joomla! that uses modules to do it, and Drupal using blocks. The WordPress 2.8 comes to change this failure…
It’s my opinion.
Hug you all!
14th Jun
ErisDS says:
You misunderstood me, I love the new widgets panel (although it makes FF freeze for me). It’s the plugins interface I don’t like – they’re in one long list instead of sections and it’s confusing!
14th Jun
ElanMan says:
By all means send me a list of your plugins (either through my site or WDF) :)
14th Jun
ErisDS says:
I’ve discovered it’s due to the DB Cache plugin. Slightly annoying but not a major problem.
14th Jun
notbanksy says:
I’ve only updated one of 5 wp installations so far, but I’m so far not impressed. First one lost the TinyMCE editor after update, and then refused to play with a couple of plugins grrr. Put me on a wrong foot to begin with, not to mention the new plugin page. Not a fan so far, hope the next update is more stable/ usable.
14th Jun
Posts about plugins as of June 14, 2009 | All About WordPress pinged back:
[...] a similar problem here with my homepage and wrote a simple plugin for the WordPress Wordpress 2.8 – erisds.co.uk 06/14/2009 Over the weekend I updated my blog to WordPress 2.8 [...]
15th Jun
JohnONolan says:
I like it – but as you mentioned, the new plugins interface is awful! Everything in the list has the same weight, there’s no distinguishment between anything!
15th Jun
ErisDS says:
Well so far it seems to be unanimous dislike for the new plugins screen!
There are definitely some improvements, but also an awful lot of bugs. I realise that this can’t be accounted for when you have such a large array of plugins developed by such a huge community, but you’d have thought they’d have done a bit more testing with the major plugins and published a list which you are shown before you upgrade!
@Notbanksy: along with my tagging problem your TinyMCE bug seems to be one of the few that is reported and some solutions are offered on the support thread but it took me ages to find that!
@JohnONolan: Yup, not only is there no distinguishment but each item in the list has even less definition between its properties now so it is REALLY hard to see what is what.
15th Jun
Duncan says:
Im still testing out 2.8 but as it stands im not going to update the rest of my sites yet, until I can identify what’s causing the slowww admin page loads.
Cant help but feel disappointed with this version, ah well next time eh?
15th Jun
ErisDS says:
@Duncan have you tried it in Chrome? As a temporary you should find that speeds things up a bit!
16th Jun
curtismchale says:
I like the new wordpress. I do miss the old plugins page as it truly seperated what was and wasn’t installed and it had tiger striping which was great when you have more than 3 or 4 plugins going.
As for hacking plugins to get multiple instances…You called it hacking. Hacks break when things get updated. I would expect it to break and be happy if it didn’t.
Good luck getting things sorted. I found that if I killed the flash uploader for FF then it worked way better.
16th Jun
ErisDS says:
@curtismchale I realise my first paragraph is now a little nonsensical because of the insert & delete – but I wasn’t moaning about my hack breaking things! I knew it was a hack, and I knew instantly why my stuff had disappeared & was able to go and play with the sexy new widgets interface whilst putting it all back to normal :)
On the other hand, I was extremely annoyed that tagging stopped working, and although I realise that WordPress can’t be tested with every plugin, DB Cache is quite popular & the tag issue is known so there should have been a warning (or at least a link to known issues for checking pre-upgrade).
28th Jul
Robin Bastien says:
Man, 2.8 hasn’t been smooth for me either. To me it’s just the plugin support still hasn’t caught up. Some of the Multilanguage programs are broken, and having difficulties with SHOPP too. A lot was changed, but for 2.9 I’d definitely wait until all my plugins are supported before they broke my site :O
28th Jul
ErisDS says:
Fortunately WordPress 2.8.1 fixed all the bugs that I was experiencing. 2.8.2 is also a VERY important update for anyone who hasn’t done it yet as it was a security fix.
It’s a shame that the plugins haven’t caught up yet. It’s one draw back of using open source community driven software. The only solution is, as you say, to wait a few months until things are supported before upgrading.
5th Oct
Web Design Malta says:
I found 1 issue with upgrading WordPress to 2.8.x – my widget interface suddenly broke, with dotted placeholder boxes appearing all over the place. I finally tracked this down to the fact that in my functions.php I had deregistered the normal jQuery hook and forced jQuery 1.2.6 to load, to let one of my custom plugins play nice. As soon as I allowed WordPress to load its desired jQuery version (1.3.2), everything was fine with the admin console. Hoping this may be of use to someone.