Welcome to SUNDAY in Sirthinks’ land.

The wonderful people at Wordpress have released a new version, or should I say upgraded version of this wonderful blogware we call Wordpress. A message showed up in my dashboard saying, Wordpress 2.3 is released, update today.

Not being one to ignore orders, I upgraded immediately. I even, for once, followed the udgrade instructions:

• Back up your database -> DONE
• Back up your custom files -> Done
• Deactivate all (51) plugins -> Done (except one)
• Open the Wordpress 2.3 archive and upload to server overwriting existing files -> Done
• Run upgrade.php -> Done
• Reactivate plugins -> Done
• Let ‘er rip

All looked good right up until I tried to enter a post. I wrote the post, over there in the Side Thoughts section, asking for anyone who notices problems to let me know. When I went to save it all hell broke loose. Yup, errors galore. The same thing happened when trying to add or edit comments.

In frustration I closed the doors. Yup, that handy little maintenance plugin came in handy once again.

So I changed the theme to a default theme so that any changes I made would not be affected by the hacks and edits I have done to this theme. Then I:

• Deactivated all the plugins -> except one
• Wrote a test message and saved it
• Checked the database for the alledgedly missing file -> it was now there and all was fine
• One by one I reactivated the plugins, writing a test message after each activation
• About halfway through the list of plugins I found one that caused the whole works to crash again -> Google Sitemap XML generator -> no problem, searching google I found there was an update. Downloaded and installed and et voila -> It worked.
• Back to reactivating and testing after each plugin was activated
• Got to the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin (my favourite of all plugins) and it CRASHED BIG TIME!
• Once Ultimate Tag Warrior was deactivated all worked well.
• Reactivated the rest of the plugins and then went hunting for solutions for not having UTW

With some help from a few other blogs and web sites like Wordpress Codex, Christina from the Internet, Gormful, and some ingenious coding of my own I have avoided having an OCD induced coronary after facing the loss of Ultimate Tag Warrior from my theme.

Everything seems to be working properly. Unfortunately, I have forgotten what I was going to blog about before everything went amiss. Oh well, I am sure I will remember at a time when it is not appropriate for me to be blogging. WHATEVER!! Anytime is BLOGGING TIME!

Check back for more of my Societally Induced Rants!