I finally took the plunge last night and upgraded this site (and several other Wordpress sites I manage) to the latest version - 2.1.2. There are numerous new features in the 2.1x line that make the upgrade well worth your time. A few personal favorites so far:
- Auto-save for posts and pages
- Tabbed editor to switch between WYSIWYG and code editing
- Spell checking
I have also noticed a great speed increase when working in the Admin section.The upgrade itself was smooth and painless. I had an minor issue that turned into a major headache - mostly due to my “still developing” php skills. 
I did feel a bit better though when I realized I was not the only one having a problem with it.
Basically, the 2.1.x modifies the way Wordpress deals with categories for links and posts and my sidebar code had to be modified to get it working properly. I received the error:
WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'ORDER BY cat_name' at line 1]
SELECT cat_id, cat_name FROM ORDER BY cat_name
It might be a relatively minor problem, but it took me a while to get it figured out.
Apparently, the code that I was using to pull in my links (wp_get_links) has been deprecated (sort of), so I had to use wp_list_bookmarks in its place, plus tweak some surrounding code to get it looking right and ordered correctly.
There have also been some reports that the upgrade occasionally does not perform a couple of the database updates that are required. I experienced that on one site. The MySQL code posted here cleared it up:
ALTER TABLE –database–.wp_categories ADD COLUMN link_count BIGINT(20) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0 AFTER category_count,
ADD COLUMN posts_private TINYINT(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0 AFTER link_count,
ADD COLUMN links_private TINYINT(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0 AFTER posts_private;
My thanks to various posters on the Wordpress forums whose posts led me in the right direction. (1, 2, 3, 4)
In the end, I highly recommend the upgrade. The performance boost alone has made it worth it for me. The rest is just gravy.
Note: If you are running version 2.1.1 - you are encouraged to upgrade now due to a pretty major security issue.
Technorati Tags: upgrade, wordpress, wordpress 2.1.2
Hey thanks for paving the way on this. I think I am using the wp_get_links function in a few places, so I’ll be watching for that and fix accordingly.
As to the security issue, I’ve really thought about blogging about that, even though it’s been in the news a few days now. It’s such a strange event and rare to hear about. I certainly don’t want to give undue credit to the cracker, but breaking into WordPress.org and inserting malicious code into a source package is not manageable by a novice. I am glad to hear of the WordPress team’s response and plan of action. I think that should solve it.
David Russell
March 16th, 2007
Hey man,
The wp_get_links thing drove me nuts at first. I was pulling my hair out. Fortunately, other (best) Wordpress admins had dealt with it before.
The security issue is a very interesting incident. Unless someone had an insanely insecure password, it surely took at least a moderate level of skill to get it and do the damage. Obviously, I know nothing about Wordpress’ distribution system, but still…
I don’t want to encourage or condone such things, but for some reason, such stories are always a bit amusing to me…and then I run off and check every server I manage to make sure I haven’t been just completely owned!
Zack Rippy
March 19th, 2007
Well, I upgraded my site without any issues this weekend. None of my plugins broke. I was lucky.
Philip
March 27th, 2007