WordPress Hubris Shows in 2.6 Upgrade Fiasco

Posted on August 18, 2008
Filed Under Web News |

The WordPress 2.6 upgrade contained a bug in the upgrade script that destroyed the entire Categories list for many bloggers - as it happens I was one of them on a different blog. Fortunately David Cumps figured out what had happened in the database update, and his post, combined with its many comments, helped many find the way to restore their data.

For the answers to this issue, see his post,Wordpress 2.6 Upgrade - Fix Missing Categories. WordPress changed its database structure - again - and this time didn’t check the code that was supposed to map the old Categories to the new Terms. By 2.6.1 they had the upgrade script fixed, but Ouch! what a problem for many people.

And check this review story giving the sage advice to wait a month before upgrading to anything WP pushes at you: Too early to upgrade WordPress to 2.6 easily

This is what comes from following that prompt in the Dashboard that your version is out of date and should be upgraded.

Hubris will get you every time. And surely a little hubris has found its way into the WP operation, with the dashboard now featuring that really emphatic encouragement to upgrade, and the releases coming so fast. But beware before you get too certain in your stance, WordPress. It’s not true that people need to upgrade just because you have a new version.

Even WordPress may need a little refresher in humility. No sign yet that this episode delivered this to them however.

Comments

One Response to “WordPress Hubris Shows in 2.6 Upgrade Fiasco”

  1. Alex on August 20th, 2008 5:41 am

    BTW, there are coupla nice plugins, just to facilitate fighting the hubris:

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/disable-wordpress-core-update/
    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/disable-wordpress-plugin-updates/

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