Ladysign

Wordpress 2.8 update and solve problems

Difficulty:
Some days ago Wordpress released their new version of Wordpress: 2.8.
I always recommand updating when using opensource systems like this. Besides,
version 2.8 makes your Wordpress installation a lot faster.
Here you can read the official change log, to see what’s really new in Wordpress 2.8.
The most important feature is the new Widgets panel and a new widget class.
This panel now shows all available widgets, and all registered sidebars and allows you to drag’n’drop,
via Ajax to keep your Wordpress maintaining smooth, fast and easy.

However, lots of the existing widget plugins, also the easy ones do not support the
new WP_Widget class, since they still use the old widget model.
So what will happen if you auto-update your Wordpress to version 2.8?
These plugins won’t work. But even worse: you probably can not login anymore if all your
old plugins are still activated. (You will notice this when you’ll be forwarded to a blank admin page.)

To solve this, it won’t require you hard work. Simply login with your FTP client,
and rename the “plugins” folder (to for example: “_plugins”).
From now on, you can login again. Wordpress automaticly disabled all your plugins,
since Wordpress can not find the installed plugin folders.
You can now rename the “_plugins” folder back to “plugins” and from the admin plugin
panel, (if possible upgrade some of your installed plugins – you will see a message if so.)
and now, enable the plugins one by one.

As soon as you get a blank screen again, you’ll have to repeat the above steps
for all the plugins, but hey now you know which plugin is not compatible.