Major change, but you can’t see it

November 3rd, 2009 0:54 by ogrim

I have upgraded to a regular install of WordPress 2.8.5 from an old, useless version of WordPress MU. The MU stands for multi-user, which I thought would save me a lot of time for hosting several blogs. Instead it led to frustration. Releases are lagging behind the official WordPress project, so I could not benefit from new features when a new version got released. There was also no tool to export the database, as I could import it in the first place. This was later solved by exporting the WordPress database in XML format.

WordPress MU had stored all the files and pictures I had uploaded in a special folder, nested deep within the directory tree. URL rewriting made this show up as /files, although it was much deeper than that. By simply extracting the folder and putting it in the root directory, I matched the previous URL rewriting, thus retaining all functionality for images and files. I had put off this upgrade for a long time, in fear of breaking something. After some testing on a local web server, I was confident everything would work out. I’m glad it did!

The minor change, you can see. It is the sidebar featuring tags, latest comments and soon hyperlinks.