When I ignored the error and continued to the admin panel, I noticed that there were no categories listed, and all the posts were set to the “uncategorized” category (though even this was not listed on the Manage -> Categories page).

The reason for this error is that WP 2.3.x does not use the wp_categories table; it uses wp_terms and wp_terms_taxonomy instead. The upgrade script is supposed to move the data from the former to the latter, but something was preventing it from doing so successfully.

A search of the WordPress codex revealed some important reminders, but no help:

• Always back up your database before attempting an upgrade
• Always disable all plugins before attempting an upgrade
• Always revert to the default “Kubrick” theme before attempting an upgrade (because many themes now contain custom functions that can interfere with the upgrade process)

Fortunately, I’d done backups, as I always do. However, I must admit to being somewhat spoiled with WordPress upgrades, as this is the first significant difficulty I’ve ever encountered with an upgrade (other than incompatible template tags and plugins). This is a chilling reminder that, no matter how well things have gone in the past, doing a backup is NOT optional; it’s essential.

After trying everything I could think of, I recalled a forum post that suggested commenting out (or deleting) these two lines in the wp-config.php file:
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
define('DB_COLLATE', 'utf8');

You can comment them out by preceding them with two forward slashes:
//define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
//define('DB_COLLATE', 'utf8');

Certain earlier versions of WP shipped with these lines, though you may not have them at all.

I restored my database from the backup, used PHPMyAdmin to deactivate all the plugins and to set the theme to ‘default’, and ran the upgrade script again (by visiting mysite.tld/wp-admin).

This did it, and I was able to re-activate my plugins and theme. Problem solved.

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There are several ways to list your tags:

• Before or after each post, so people can click a tag to see other posts you’ve tagged the same way
• In a tag cloud in your sidebar
• On a tag archive page

I’ve found that tag archive pages are indexed very well by search engines, so I highly recommend using tags. But how should you use them, and how should they relate to WordPress categories?

As Lorelle said several years ago, tags are like a blog’s index, and categories are like the table of contents. Tags are great for SEO, but you don’t want to list a zillion of them in your sidebar; you want a concise list of categories.

It’s fine to have a zillion tags, but they’re better listed in a tag cloud or on an archive page. With that in mind, let’s look at how tags can become a part of your blog.

Listing the Tags for Each Post

Most WordPress themes have a post metadata section either before or after the body of the post, which includes the date, author, and comment link. This is a great place to display the tags for that post.

In this section, you can add
<?php the_tags('Tags: ', ', ', ' | '); ?>
to display a comma-separated list of the post’s tags, followed by a | mark. The parameters for this function are, respectively, what goes before the tags, what separates the tags, and what goes after the tags. Full documentation for this template tag (WP Codex)

Since tags are likely to make the post metadata section take up more than one line, make sure your theme still looks good if this section is several lines long; for example, some themes don’t leave enough linespacing because the theme author assumes it’ll only be one line long.

Since this tag applies to a specific post, it must be in the loop, not in the sidebar, header, or footer.

Listing Tags in a Sidebar Cloud

A tag cloud is a great way to visualize the topics you blog about, because the size of each tag is proportional to the number of times you’ve used it. This may not be immediately obvious on a new blog, but if you have 1,000 posts, and 800 of them are about horses and only 100 are about fish, the “horse” tag will be much bigger than the “fish” tag (assuming you’ve tagged your posts).

Here’s the function to display the tag cloud:
<?php wp_tag_cloud(''); ?>

You can put this tag in the sidebar or footer of your site, but don’t put it in the loop.

You can customize the minimum and maximum size of the items in the tag cloud, as well as how many to display and how to sort them. Full documentation for this template tag (WP Codex)

Displaying Tags on a Tag Archive Page

If you have tons of tags and you want to display them all in one place, but not on the main page of your blog, you can create a tag archive page. Here’s how.

1. Make a copy of your single.php or index.php template, and name it something like “tag-archive.php”
2. At the top of your tag archive template, insert this:<?php
/*
Template Name: Tag Archive
*/
?>
3. Replace everything from
   <?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
   to
   <?php endif; ?>
   (aka The Loop) with the <?php wp_tag_cloud(); ?> function. You can download a Kubrick-compatible tag archive template here.
4. Upload the new template file tag-archive.php to your theme folder.
5. Create a new page and call it something like “Tag Archives”. Under Page Template in the sidebar, select the new template you created. Leave the body of the page blank, and publish it.
6. Make sure you link to the new page in your navbar or sidebar so people can find the tag archive page

Converting Categories to Tags

WordPress 2.3+ also has a category-to-tag converter, which you can use for categories that don’t have very many posts in them. To use it, go to Manage -> Import, and select Categories to Tags Converter.

The converter lists all of your categories and the number of posts in each. Select the categories you want to convert using the checkboxes, and hit Convert. This will add the tags and delete the categories you select, so be selective and don’t eliminate all of your categories.

Importing Plugin Tags to WordPress Tags

If you’ve been using a tagging plugin like Ultimate Tag Warrior or Bunny’s Technorati Tags, you can convert your tags to WordPress native tags (since they’re stored in a different place in the database). The converters (including the aforementioned category-to-tag converter) are listed in the WordPress admin panel under Manage -> Import.

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• Akismet - probably the best anti-spam plugin around
• ReCaptcha - a great anti-spam plugin to use when Akismet doesn’t do the job
• WP Contact Form - there are tons of variations on this plugin, but the best I’ve found is from Doug Karr
• Admin Drop Down Menus - this plugin saves me hundreds of clicks a week by converting the two-level menus in the WordPress admin panel into dropdown menus.
• WordPress Database Backup - if you use only one plugin, this should be it. Needless to say, backing up your database is crucial.

There are tons of other plugins that are useful for particular situations, but the above are my favorite general-purpose plugins at the moment.

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To make your theme files writable, you need to set the permissions on the theme files so WordPress can edit them. This process is also known as CHMOD, short for CHange MODe, which is a UNIX/Linux command (which you probably don’t need to worry about).

To change the permissions of the files on your site, the way you’d open a folder on your computer, you need an FTP application, which is a separate program that connects to the web server to let you upload, download, move, or rename files.

You can download an FTP program such as the following:
Smart FTP
CuteFTP
FireFTP (a Firefox extension, which may be the easiest if you use the Firefox browser; will not work if you don’t)

After installing one of these programs or another FTP application (there are tons available for free), login to your site via FTP. You’ll need three pieces of information:
FTP server - probably ftp.yourdomainname.com
Username - probably the same as your account webhosting account username
Password -probably the same as your account webhosting account password

Note that the username and password will not ordinarily be the same as your WordPress username and password.

Your files are probably within a folder called public_html, httpdocs, html or something along those lines. From there, the themes will be in /wp-content/themes/, and each theme is in its own folder.

Navigate to the folder containing your theme. Then, highlight all of the files in this folder and right-click on them. There should be an option on the FTP program’s right-click (context) menu called “CHMOD” or “Permissions.”

The permissions settings specify what can be done with a file, and by whom. They’re represented by numbers or checkboxes that give read/write/execute permissions for each file to various groups, e.g. website visitors, you (the FTP user), or the server administrator.

If the files are set to 000, only the server administrator will be able to access them. By default, most files uploaded via FTP are set to 755 or something similar, which means that WordPress can run because anyone can “execute” the file (that is, access the script). However, since WordPress is not considered a user, it’s a member of the “public” group, so by default it can’t write to files.

If you set the theme files to 777 (so everyone has “write” permissions as well as read and execute permissions), that will let you edit your theme from within WordPress. If your FTP program uses checkboxes instead of numbers for file permissions, just check all of them. If you change themes later, just re-do this for the new theme’s files. You could do this for all your files without any problem, but it would take a while, and it’s not really necessary.

Note that if you make an edit to a file that introduces an error that takes down your site, you might need to upload a fresh copy of the theme via FTP, so it’s best not to edit PHP portions of your theme unless you have a backup of the theme file or are comfortable editing PHP. The functions.php file should not be edited from within WordPress, as an error can take down the WP admin panel as well as the public site, and you’d need to fix the error via FTP.

This procedure will work for plugins as well using the built-in plugin editor, but editing plugins is much more likely to crash WordPress, so we do not recommend using the plugin editor. Most plugins have an options page now, and don’t require any editing. if you need to edit a file, use a text editor on your computer and upload the changed file via FTP. If you get an error, simply delete the file, fix the error, and upload it again.

To summarize:

1. Download and install an FTP application
2. Login to your site via FTP
3. Navigate to the theme folder
4. Select all the files, and right-click on them, and select “Permissions” or “CHMOD”
5. Check all of the boxes or set the permissions to 777
6. Visit Presentation -> Theme Editor in WordPress to edit your theme files

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What do you look for?

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If for some reason this plugin will not work for you, we are still available to do Blogger-to-WordPress imports. Contact us for a quote.

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To fix this, open /wp-includes/wp-db.php
and look for this line:
$this->dbh = @mysql_connect($dbhost, $dbuser, $dbpassword);
(it’s around line 52).

Immediately after that line, add:
mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");

Save and re-upload the file, and you should see accented characters as usual.

Via

If you are a WebbleYou customer and require accented character support, please contact us and we will be happy to make the necessary changes. No alterations to the database are necessary.

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Most importantly, WordPress 2.1 requires a server that is running MySQL 4.x. MySQL 3.x will not work, and will cause error messages to be displayed.

If you have any questions about upgrading, please contact us. We do all WP upgrades upon request, at no charge to customers.

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New customers who sign up today will have WordPress 2.1 preinstalled, and existing customers may request an upgrade (at no charge) by contacting WebbleYou support.

WP 2.1 has a slew of new features, including:

• Autosave
• Tabbed WYSIWYG/HTML editor
• More time-saving Ajax features, so you can edit your blog without reloading pages
• Improved Dashboard and Page writing features

WordPress has also announced an aggressive new upgrade schedule, with the next release set for April 23rd. More at the WordPress Development Blog

Note that there are expected to be some plugin compatibility issues, which you can read about and check on.

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Share This saves you from cluttering your site with eight million links to social bookmarking sites, and lets you follow each post with a single icon. Users can click this icon to see a multitude of social bookmarking options:

You can see it on Geektronica.com or on Alex’s blog.

Some install notes:

• Your theme needs to use the wp_footer(); function
• You may need to adjust the CSS in the plugin file to get the colors to look right on your site
• You will need to upload the Prototype.js JavaScript library to get it to work. This is included with the download, and goes in /wp-includes/js.

WebbleYou is proud to support the use of this plugin. Please contact us if you are a WebbleYou customer and would like to use this plugin on your site.

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