Should You Upgrade to WP 3.0.1 and Twenty Ten 1.1

Look Before You Leap!

The old expression, 'look before you leap', applies to lots of situations, including WordPress, Plugins or Theme upgrades!  It's good advise to think about possible problems before upgrading. In so doing, you often prevent problems. This article uses WP 3.0.1 upgrade as an example.

The announcement at the top of your dashboard is very inviting and hard to miss. But resist updating until you take a look around. Here's what a friend said when I sent out a warning to some of our new clients:

Ha, it's odd that you sent me this. I just did the upgrade this morning on my site and it reset my whole theme.  So I spent the whole morning manually changing it back (grrrr...thanks WP!). Thankfully I keep backups on my computer...

Question from client: Should I upgrade to WordPress 3.0.1?

Reply:

Of course WP encourages you to upgrade to ensure you have the best protection. And WP is always making enhancements. However things can go wrong so you need a plan!  If the upgrade is not marked as 'critical', I like to wait a few days and see if there are annoying complications like plugin conflicts -- usually a Google search would bring such alerts to the surface.

1. View the list of files affected and you might recognize something that's critical to you --- e.g. I found they changed the Twenty Ten theme files (I recently customized those files for a client!). So theme changes would have to be re-done from your documentation/backup --- if you use a WP free theme.  Also be aware that quirks can arise with premium themes so be on the look out... You'll find the list here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_3.0.1

2. Backup your blog before you upgrade -- You may already have WP-DBManager plugin active so you can force a backup.
Look down the dashboard left site near bottom and you'll see 'DataBase' -- press for options and action. If inactive, then activate it and set your preferences.
You can also do a manual backup ---Ishan wrote a guest post with the procedures.
http://www.virginbloggernotes.com/2010/05/19/how-to-backup-a-wordpress-blog/

So upgrading is necessary at some point just keep your eyes open!

Backing up your site first

We use and recommend the WB DB Manager plugin for an automatic weekly backup. We receive and store attachments in our email inbox. Ishan also takes a manual backup monthly. But just before upgrading to WP 3.0.1 we took another one!

Twenty Ten Theme Upgrade to 1.1

Expect WordPress to continue to enhance this very popular free theme, Twenty Ten, as was done in the current WP upgrade.  I like the theme which uses the custom menu:

With the new custom menu feature, you can easily add tabs that link to external sites such as your own website or perhaps to an off-site forum that you have created.
- Custom Menus Arrive at WordPress.com

Twenty Ten now allows you to upload a custom background - either fixed or scrolling. Cool. It also has a widgetized footer (3 columns)!

That's why I used the theme to customize a non-profit site, AustinDancersAcademy. The custom menu has drop down pages arranged in the order the owner wanted. The theme allows a custom background color and I modified the styling to use the same color on widget backgrounds.

custom menu; background color on site and widget titles

I also took advantage of the  widgetized footer.

How to document your Custom Edit changes

The upgraded Twenty Ten theme will effectively erase the styling and footer changes after WP  is upgraded. Here's how I documented changes to make them easier to re-apply.

Use a notepad document and record just the changes. I like to add comments which I use a breadcrumbs. And, NO you can not just overwrite the WP 3.0.1 style sheet with a saved version you have on your pc!  Who knows what new elements were added and needed in the upgraded environment!

Here's my documentation. Notice the trick of  'display: none;'  which allows you to not show the theme's text header and tag line, etc. if you want a header with image and text in one.

STYLE.CSS ---

1. omit borders around header and top padding [using custom header]

/* This is the custom header image */

#branding img {

clear: both;

border-top: 0 solid #000;

display: block;

border-bottom: 0 solid #000;

}

#header {

padding: 0px 0 0 0;

2. omit site name, tagline and footer credits

#site-title { display:none;

#site-description { display:none;

#site-info { display: none;

#site-generator { display:none;

3. center all widget text & images

.widget-container {

margin: 0 0 18px 0;

text-align: center;

}

4. Widget bar color and padding changed to purple #D7B0FF

.widget-title {

color: #222;

font-weight: bold;

text-align: center;

background-color: #D7B0FF;

padding: 3px 0 3px 0;

margin: 3px 0 3px 0;