So I just upgraded to WordPress 2.3 and POW, my site stops working, dead. Did they change the instructions? It used to be that you just make sure you don’t overwrite your wp-content or config.php files. Nope, that’s still the same. Quick, to the Apache logs!
[client 64.142.72.114] PHP Fatal error: Cannot redeclare get_terms() (previously declared in /var/www/html/burrowowl.net/wordpress/wp-includes/taxonomy.php:447) in /var/www/html/burrowowl.net/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/Similar_Posts/similar-posts.php on line 848, referer: http://burrowowl.net/wordpress/wp-admin/options-permalink.php
ah-ha! One quick find-and-replace later, we’re back in business.
Usually, I go to /wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php and it does it all for me. Sometimes the database needs to be updated and this does it.
Ah, but this time they decided to add a new function to “taxonomy.php” whose name conflicts with a function in one of my favorite plugins. It isn’t reasonable to expect the WordPress developers to be aware of every function used by every plugin, of course, which is why so many plugins’ function names start with the plugin name or are implemented as class methods instead.
I go almost pluggingless now because of bad past experiences.
Alas, I use a number of plugins, several for purposes that most visitors to this site would ever notice, such as my search meter, changing the back-end search behavior, some permalink redirects, making it easier for me to pepper my posts with acronym tags, and so forth.
Plugins provide a great way to avoid rolling my own CMS and just rely on somebody else’s code instead. I’d be pretty frustrated with this site if it behaved exactly like a freshly-installed WordPress blog. But I’m picky.