WordPress 3.1 came out this morning, and I’m seeing the same three issues come up over and over again for a lot of people:
First, if you’re using custom post types, you’ll probably need to update your register_post_type() call, because the entire capabilities array changed in 3.1. That’s because it was completely broken in 3.0, so I know it’s a pain to fix it, but it’s worth the trouble. (This also means that Custom Post Types UI is broken at the moment. I love the plugin for quick proofs of concept, but I really think you need to code your own plugin if you’re using custom post types in production.)
If a lot of your meta boxes (custom fields, excerpt, author, slug, discussion, etc.) went away on your edit post/page screens, it’s probably because most of them are hidden by default now. I think this is a good thing for most users, and it affects only the boxes that you’ve never rearranged. However, you can always turn them back on in your screen options.
Hate the admin bar? You can turn it off if you want, but there are some cool plugins for it, like Snack Bar (for multisite admins) and the Debug Bar (for developers). For what it’s worth, John O’Nolan (who?) agreed with you. It took me a while to get used to it. I was chatting with someone in IRC earlier today, and we agreed that there really should be a link to the Dashboard in the top level, not under the username… so I cooked up a really quick plugin to make it happen.
I’m working on a list of things that have changed since the book was published, but at the moment, these are the three things people seem to be tripping over.
ETA: Andrea Rennick alerted me to a fourth common problem: half your permalinks suddenly break. Try removing your .htaccess file, then go to Settings → Permalink and save. Letting WordPress regenerate the .htaccess file seems to solve the problem. Dre Armeda has more on this.
I’m personally torn about the new admin bar. I thought I was going to hate it but now that I see it in action, I like the analytic data that it presents. I wish there was a hotkey for me to turn it on/off when i wanted though.
@Christopher:
You might take a look at the Admin Bar Minimiser plugin – it will allow you to show the bar when you want it, and hide it when you don’t want to see it:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/admin-bar-minimiser/
Thanks for this post. I was going mad trying to find ways to turn off comments on Pages in 3.1. And your little mention of screen options did the trick. Never used that before. Wonderful. Bravo!
Me too! I’ve been wanting to switch off comments and reinstalled everything using a cloning tool twice. I thought I had a dodgy plugin. This solves everything!
I love the screen options. I hadn’t realised what it did until I read your post. Thanks so much, Julie :-)
I will add that on all Mac browsers I have tried, the “visual” editor (TinyMCE) does not display ANY buttons, and instead the textbox shows some of the HTML markup.
Very strange, and a dealbreaker.
Anyone know how to get this back on?
I haven’t seen that problem, but TinyMCE problems are often caused by plugin conflicts.
On my site, this problem was caused by a plugin called ShrimpTest. Deactivating it solved the problem. I’d look for anything that might have hooks into the editing process. I hope that helps.
I had the same problem caused by the Adsense Deluxe plugin. I hadn’t thought to start looking through those-thanks!
I wonder if you could help me out. Yesterday I updated to WordPress 3.1, but today I notice that my homepage is no longer excluding certain categories from showing the excerpts. I still have the followiing in the custom_functions.ph file (ID of category I want to exclude is “4″, the “News” category)
is_home) {
$query->set(‘cat’, ‘-4’);
}
return $query;
}
add_filter(‘pre_get_posts’, ‘exclude_category’);
add_action(‘thesis_hook_footer’, ‘custom_footer’);
function custom_footer() {
Can you suggest a solution to this? Has anyone else come across this?
I hope you can help.
Unfortunately this is a known issue. We should have a workaround posted soon and it will be fixed in 3.1.1. You can track it here: http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/16622.
(Actually, there’s already a workaround of sorts there.)
Oh Wow! Thank you for the answer!!! Even if you haven’t told me how to fix it, you’ve told me that the problem is already known. That’s enough for me. Thanks again.
the problem is happening for me too – im on windows using firefox or ie and i can see no buttons, the text is the same colour as the background meaning i can only see it if i highlight – or if i switch to html and switch back to visual it stays in html mode. Anyone resolved? i deactivated my plugins to no avail.
It’s almost certainly a plugin conflict. Try disabling all your other plugins, beginning with any that have to do with editing.
(Also, while I don’t mind at all trying to help people here, you’ll get more eyes on the problem if you post in the forum.)
Hi Stephanie,
Could you help me understand that a bit better? We added some things, but the changes were designed to be fully backwards compatible. It was inflexible in 3.0 but I don’t think it was broken :-) If you’ve seen reports of it not being backwards compatible, then it looks like I fudged something, and would definitely like to take a look.
Cheers! Nacin
I’ve seen a handful of reports that the CPTs disappeared entirely from the menu after upgrading, which says to me that the users no longer had the right capabilities to edit them. On my own sites, I’ve seen no issues at all with admins, but for everyone else I had to update the caps array, then explicitly give those new capabilities to the various roles.
Hmm. Flag me down immediately if you do see anything. Nothing should have broken there at all. :-(
Since updating to 3.1 I’ve been receiving 404 errors on blog posts. When I change permalinks to the default structure (that ends with a /) in place of my “was working before I upgraded structure,” (links ending in .html) the 404 errors go away BUT then all the posts linking back to earlier blog content (hardcoded to the non-default structure, ending in .html) create 404 errors when you select any of the links within. Basically, I need WordPress 3.1 to work with my custom permalink structure. Please please please help.
For example within the content of this blog post : http://stephanieklein.com/2010/10/recycled-issues/
Is a link back to this blog post: http://stephanieklein.com/2006/04/failure.html
And almost every one of my blog posts links back to earlier content in the body content. It’s hardcoded to point to a blog post with the .html link structure.
I’ve tried setting back to the custom setting, but then everything else is broken.
I KNOW others are having this issue with categories, but I’m having the issue with everything. I have already tried the following:
From this site ( http://dre.im/if-pages-return-a-404-after-wordpress-3-1-upgrade/ ) I tried this:
1. Log in to wp-admin and go to permalinks, click save (this should refresh your permalinks). Check to see if this fixes your permalinks. If not, set to default. :)
2. Disable your plugins to remove them out of the equation.
3. Log into your server via sFTP/SSH/FTP and find your .htaccess file. It should be located in the root of your WordPress install.
4. Pull the htaccess file down so that you have a local back up. Once you’ve pulled it down, go ahead and delete it from your server.
5. Go back to wp-admin and visit your permalinks page. try enabling custom permalinks.
6. This should remedy the issue and you can go ahead and reenable your plugins.
Hi,
Just upgraded to 3.1 today – I know I know – and have this exact same issue. How did you solve it?
No idea at all on what to do
Can somebody please help?
thanks
Since updating this little bit of code has not been working like it had been. Probably has something to do with the ‘PJW Query Child Of plugin’.
get_results("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_parent = ".$post->ID." AND post_type = 'page' ORDER BY $wpdb->posts.post_date DESC", 'OBJECT'); ?><a href="ID); ?>" rel="bookmark" title="post_title; ?>">post_title; ?><a href="ID); ?>">
It went from doing this to doing this
While testing the upgrade (manual) on our dev server, I didn’t have any real problems, but the strangest thing once finished: the plugins menu is empty. Nothing changed about the folder structure, nothing was overwritten, etc.. 3.1 just thinks the plugins menu is empty. Anything off the top of your head that could cause this? Also trying the .org forums.
Thanks,
David
David
Hi,
Is there any way that i can switch back to 3.0.4?
I am sure 3.1 is better than the 3.0, but at the moment there are just too many small troubles in the plugins.. so i’d like to switch back again, at least for now…
Looking forward for a reply :)
Thanks a lot before!!
Hello there!
Is there any way that i can switch back to 3.0.4?
I am sure 3.1 is better than the 3.0, but at the moment there are just too many small troubles in the plugins.. so i’d like to switch back again, at least for now…
Looking forward for a reply :)
Thanks a lot before!!
OMG thanx so much. not being able to switch of the comments for certain pages was driving me mad
Well in addition to 3.1 being slower than molasses in winter, I have a constant error message at the bottom of my post editor that says “you do not have permission to do this”. I am also having issue with pages going 404 for no apparent reason and my nav bar disappearing.
Any advice?
I have custom post types I crafte in the functions.php file. What does:
“you’ll probably need to update your register_post_type() call,”
mean?
Hi Need help..upgraded to wordpress 3.1. Can see my changes in the admin but not on the front end(in IE). Can only see the changes in IE if I am logged in at the backend at the same time. Everthing works fine in Firefox…help
I believe I was able to resolve the issue with the visual editor showing HTML after I inactivated the WP-Stats-Dashboard plug-in (Version 2.5.5.2).
For me updating to 3.1 is cause headache. I have trouble in TinyMCE bug. I’d tried all the solutions found in the net but no luck. So I downgrade and wait for the next wp updates. :(
Did you have TinyMCE Advanced installed, or another plugin that modifies the editor? Deactivate it and I bet everything will work again.
Updating your register_post_type() call, you do you do that?
I have troubles with TinyMCE in two WordPress blogs after upgrade to 3.1. The buttons disappears at all. I deactivated all my plugins and the problem persists. What can I do?
Thanks a lot mate! Very helpful. I was having a hard time trying to look for the “Allow comments” check box only to find out about the screen options from you. Keep it up!
Dear webmaster,
I used WP 3.1 and I’ve had this very super annoying problem.
I’ve set the setting reading into “Latest Post” instead of “static”, but why does my post won’t update & the front page of my website just becomes static? I’ve tried changing the template, but the problem still persists!
How can I get the latest post up in front & not just the old one that’s keep being there? It’s really really annoying & exhausting.
I’ve installed the plugin ‘disable autosave’ but it doesn’t work at all.
Can anyone help?
thanks in advance
Been having this same problem as all of you on my sites. Turns out the plugin “Allow PHP in Posts” 2.1 was the issue. Disabled it and now everything is fine.
If you do not have a plugin like this, suggest looking at magic slash setting on your server or memory allocation for running scripts on the server.