A new version of WordPress is available!
This past Saturday, March 29, WordPress released it’s most significant upgrade in many months, version 2.5. Unless you just installed or are an uber-geek like me and have been playing around with unstable pre-releases, that means you’re probably getting the above message in your WordPress Admin panel. I’m going to have a lot more info and a video or two in the days to come about this, but for now here are a couple important things to know
- Do you need to upgrade? Yes, eventually, but there’s no extreme hurry. In fact, unless you’re a very confident WP user, I recommend not upgrading just yet because I’m going to come out with some very helpful upgrading info soon. You’ll be fine to wait a week or two or even several months. You should eventually upgrade though, because there are security improvements, and you want to keep a few steps ahead of hackers and spammers.
- Will ProPhoto still work with 2.5? Yes, ProPhoto works smashingly with WordPress 2.5. If you have lots of 3rd party plugins, I can’t vouch for all of those working perfectly, but ProPhoto and its standard plugins work great. No need to worry. NOTE: there was a small glitch discovered between ProPhoto and WP 2.5 related to maximum photo width in posts, but I’ve already fixed it, and I’ve written up the fix in here for those upgrading to WP 2.5 who downloaded ProPhoto before I fixed the glitch.
- What’s in the upgrade? The biggest thing about this upgrade is a huge overhaul to the Admin area. It’s simpler, less cluttered, more intuitive, and more powerful. It’s got better post-writing features and cool things like the ability to upload many photos at once (yay!).
- Are you going to update the videos on your site? Yup. My tutorial videos are pretty much all out of date now, so they’ll be replaced soon. I needed to replace them anyway, I cranked them all out in one evening waaaay to fast.
If you are a WP veteran and want to upgrade right now, go for it. Otherwise, wait a few days and keep checking here for lots more info on how to upgrade. If you are upgrading now, here are the basic steps:
- Backup your mySQL database, wp-content/uploads folder, and wp-config.php file.
- Deactivate ALL your plugins.
- Delete the old WordPress files off your server, except DO NOT delete the wp-content folder OR the wp-config.php file.
- Upload all the new files (get the .zip file from here), except except DO NOT upload the wp-content folder. In fact, remove it before you upload anything just to be safe.
- Try to login to your admin area, and you will be prompted to upgrade your database. Do it.
- Open a can of delicious Coke Zero to celebrate your successful upgrade while you tour the new admin interface.
A HA! I noticed the issue with the max image width after upgrading, but assumed it was a WP issue. If you could post that fix soon, that’d be great! Thanks much - this will be very helpful.
Hi Jared, you were about 30 min too late. I upgraded my WP to 2.5 just before I received the mail about this (very useful) blog.
I did use the auto updater plugin and it seem to have installed brilliantly (funny enough the auto install update didn’t work though - but that’s not your problem).
Is there anything I can do myself to fix the max image width?
ok, posted the fix, and back-dated it so people would read it after this post. look here for the fix, and read it carefully!
Yeah!! I was wondering about this, I’m gonna wait a while. You are the ROCKINIST!! (thats my new word!)
Thanks Jared! I’ve done the fix now. I can sleep better at night now.
Thanks Jared! Love this new blog! The upgrade to 2.5 seems straight forward enough. I’ll probably try it this weekend.
Yep, I already updated to 2.5. Although, I didn’t deactivate my plugin’s; it does seem to be a problem though. Thanks for posting the steps, Jared, those will be helpful in later updates.