found_drama

• K2

  More of a skin framework for WordPress than a skin in and of itself… A follow-up to the classic Kubrick design; makes good use of ajax and is generally pretty snappy.

  (tags: K2 ajax blog framework wordpress)

Updated WordPress to version 2.1 this weekend and performed some other assorted maintenance. The upgrade (I discovered) was crucial in light of some PHP security issues in version 2.0.6 and while there was an intermediate 2.0.7 release it was followed so closely by 2.1 that I went ahead with the full upgrade. “While you’re at it,” I said to myself, “go ahead and drop in that Footnotes plug-in and wrap up your first CSS project of the year.” (More on both below…)

Unfortunately, the update appears to have wrecked some havoc in the process. As with any change of this nature, there are going to be some independently-maintained plug-ins that don’t play nice with the updated version. Most of the ones that we use here at F_D are just fine. The newly installed Footnotes plug-in for example¹ required no additional downloads. The Sidebar Modules plug-in was listed as “iffy” but I had no problems. Akismet’s new version shipped with 2.1, so no issues there. SparkStats wasn’t on their list at all but seems fine. Alas, it’s the heavy-weight plug-ins that appear to have issues. Ultimate Tag Warrior is apparently commiting folksonomic suicide when comments are approved. And while the Extended List Archives plug-in is listed as fully operational, the archives are misbehaving around here².

So where does that leave us? Limping into the week with most of our functionality correct but a few spots a little rough-around-the-edges.

All that said:

1. The Footnotes plug-in that I mentioned above appears to be working out nicely. Might I suggest (however) changing up the syntax to use double-carets to open a footnote and triple-carets to close them. Their default syntax of “((” and “))” probably makes more sense for quickly adding/removing the plug-in but with if you write at all like I do, you’re too likely to accidentally invoke it. Or prematurely close your footnote.
2. The 10-strip of Flickr photos just beneath the header has been updated from a hacked version of their default table-laid-out horizontal “badge” to the freeform CSS-driven badge. This was my first personal CSS project of the year (following my goals and all). Nothing particularly challenging but given my approach to learning this year, I felt it wise to start with small successes.

At any rate: Sunday morning and a cup several cups of coffee gets us through the first survey of what does/not work following the 2.1 update. It’s also a fair way of procrastinating on starting the living room painting… *shudder*

UPDATE: the K2 updates for 2.1 are in place with a little maneuvering and a couple of compromises. The Rolling Archives feature appears to be broken (with and without my customizations to header.php) so that’s been turned off for the time being. Also, my Oblique Strategies and little rabbit graphic have disappeared from the header for no apparent reason. *sigh* Win some, lose some? Actually: scratch that.  Dumb mistake now fixed.

1. Well, it took a couple rounds of tweaking to get this one right. But that was related to be customization of its syntax and had nothing to do with WPv2.1.[↩]
2. Although that might actually be attributable to the K2 framework update that I haven’t installed yet.[↩]