I upgraded My RadMod.com Wordpress blog from 1.51 to 2.01 during the evening of March 1, 2006.

The upgrade took about an hour. I noticed glitches with plugins, which I talk about below, but the basic upgrade was painless.

[FYI - Here’s a link to a thoughtful critique of Wordpress 2 by someone who installed and then uninstalled ver 2, rolling his install back to 1.5.2.]

[Update] I think I’ve fixed DC Nicer Archives to play more acceptably with my Wordpress 2.01 (though it still doesn’t play well enough)

Here’s the initial problem with DC-Nicer Archives after the upgrade: DC-Nicer-Archives corrupted the Admin Panel called “Manage Posts” — Now the Post listed EVERY post on my site, and that’s hundreds! WP started FREEZING FIREFOX whenever I performed any function through the Manage Posts screen. — I deactivated every plugin, and then reactivated every one until the problem reappeared, and DC caused it.]

Nicer Archive uses a FILTER to display things in a particular order. The FILTER messes with the Admin Panel’s filters. Nicer Archive SHOULD BE using a QUERY and LOOP, I think.

For WP 2.01, the Nicer Archive filter command needs tweaking.

Wanna do the partial fix, at least to stop DC from crashing your site? There are two. Pull up nicer_archive.php in a text editor. Change it as as follows: (The first is an OLD fix).

[By the way - I inserted some extra spaces into the code snippets below to prevent Wordpress from rendering the code]

FIRST: Change two parts of the “cat header link” function from “get _ category _ link ($ post - > post _ category )” TO “. get _ category _ link ($ post - > cat _ ID)” .

SECOND: Prevent DC from causing the Wordpress admin screens to try to show 9999 posts at one time. Change the function called “order query” from “title & order = asc & posts _ per _ page = 9999″ to “date & order = desc & posts _ per _ page = 100″ [or try leaving the 9999 alone and see if it works for you - I don’t like DC’s technique of setting Posts Per PAge to 9999 - it’s a kludge. Nicer Archives needs a LOOP rather than a FILTER —- 9999 could freeze the user’s PC if something went wrong, as it did mine.]

[END OF UPDATE] Back to the original post ——————–

I followed the instructions in the Codex exactly.

The reason I upgraded was SECURITY. My server log showed attackers attacking my index.php file. Attackers are requesting index.php and passing wierd parameters to it in the request. And my logs show that Wordpress is Actually Giving Them the Damn Index.php File - despite the wierd parameters! As far as I know, the attackers have thereby cracked my site by passing an acceptable wierd parameter to the index file (possibly exploiting a weakness in Wordpress’s older versions). They did no damage, that I can tell anyway.

I upgraded to WP 2.01 within 24 hours of noticing the attacks.

My plugins all worked exactly as they had worked in 1.51. [Except for Nicer-Archives interfering with the Manage Posts admin panel]

My plugins are:

• 1. DC-Nicer Archives. See above for my story of Nicer Archives. It seems to be working. Click a category link in the Left Column and see.
• 2. Next Post, Previous Post - Seems fine. Look below each post.
• 3. Customized Post Listing - Seems fine - see the Right Column, where I keep a list of recent posts.
• 4. wp_print — I had a big problem with WP-Print and fixed it. Read about my struggle with WP-print
• 5. My admin plugin “Enhanced Post List” doesn’t work anymore. Gotta fix it.

MORAL: Follow the Codex’s detailed instructions exactly.