WordPress 2.6 Is Out… But I’d Recommend Some Procrastination

THOSE DILIGENT developers in the WordPress community have gone and released the latest iteration of WordPress (V2.6) almost a month earlier than planned, but I wouldn’t be rushing to upgrade just yet if I was you. Read more

Welcome To The New & Improved Avalon5.com

WELCOME at last to the new look Avalon5.com site folks. There has been a hell of a lot of hours work put into this by yours truely – not all of it productive it must be said – but I’ve finally got to the stage where I can launch the new look Avalon5.com website and with it a host of new features. Read more

Site Redesign Update

THIS IS JUST A QUICK UPDATE on the state of things in respect of the site migation and redesign. I have a cool new theme in the works with some funky new features and a completely redesigned front page almost ready to roll.

I have rethought the categories and content layout completely and am in the progress of mapping this onto the new design. I know there are still some bugs and issues with the current version of WordPress, so I am going to try to sync my site migration to a new hoster and the updating of the presentation layer with the release of the patched version of WP, which I understand is a couple of weeks away.

Sorry for the mess folks, it has taken a lot of work behind the scenes to deal with the issues and work on a compeltely new look and feel, but I think you will love it once it is up and running. More as it happens…

Technical Issues

SORRY FOR THE MESS folks, but we’re experiencing some technical issues at the mo. To kick things off I had to go through a process of elimination to resolve some LCP synchronisation issues with my broadband (which eventually turned out to be dodgy cabling producing lousy Signal to Noise (SNR) ratios) and this took a few days to correct and stabilise.

At least now I’ve got a decent connection going which should enable me to take advantage of the ADSL2+ upgrades due in my areas later this year.

Then to make things worse – in a fit of what I can only assume was temporary insanity – I upgraded to the latest version of WordPress on my site instead of waiting a few weeks after the initial release for everyone else (read: guinea pigs) to test it on my behalf.

I can only blame it on the drugs; I’ve been sick as a pig all weekend and doped up to the tits on various kinds of good stuff trying to get over it.

Anyhoo – bottom line is that I’ve still got some technical issues I’m trying to resolve with this latest upgrade, most notably the fact that none of my ‘pages’ of content are displaying correctly. Posts are ok, but pages do not load, even though they are all there in the database as normal.

So folks, if you notice anything else out of whack please do let me know and I’ll try to get everything back in working order ASAP.

WordPress V2.3 Upgrade

I’VE UPGRADED the site to the latest iteration of WordPress, Version 2.3 and refreshed a lot of the plugins and code around the place too.

This release is a  major milestone in the WordPress roadmap, so there may yet be some kinks and issues to be worked out, but I tested out the upgrade on my local test site first and eventually decided to go ahead with the full upgrade anyway.

If you’re a WordPress fan – like myself – or just a user, you really should go download the latest version and upgrade, however make sure you get this Upgrade Preflight Check plugin first. It will scan your setup and see if there are likely to be any issues with the upgrade. It’s not foolproof, but it’s a nice tool to check out your probable issues in advance.

Take note that there have been some database changes since the previous version so it really is worth checking out things before you upgrade. In fairness though my upgrade took approximately 5 minutes to complete, so you can’t ask for more than that now can you?

You can download WordPress V2.3 here or indeed go check out the WordPress Support forums here for more information.

 New features in Version 2.3 include:-

• Native Tagging Support
• A Built-In Update Notification System for WordPress and Plugins (something I’ve been asking for since V1.5)
• Canonical URLs
• More Advanced WYSIWYG Editor Functionality
• Hundreds Of Other Bug Fixes / Minor Enhancements

Anyhoo, as ever, if you notice any issues, weirdness or problems around the place please contact me and let me know; I’ll sort them out as soon as possible.