Automatic upgrade to 2.8.1 destroys blog!

I’m having exactly the same problem! Please help! Thanks

I figured this out. What my problem was the theme was not in my wordpress directory on the server. I ran the admin program (wp-admin) and selected an available theme and my blog is back.

Ok, I have had the same thing occur. For this being of such a critical level of failure I am surprised that there haven’t been updates made to the installer, let alone the actual directions during install.

Even with what you all have shared here it still is unclear. Perhaps SOMEONE can assist by replying back to this thread with CLEAR, CONCISE directions (WITH DIR STRUCTURES) showing us EXACTLY what goes where.

I truly believe that by what I have seen from the combination of WP and BP, that finally the CMS that the GNU side of business has been waiting for has indeed hit. And this comment comes from a fellow who has been computing since before 99.9% of the worlds population, who from the very beginning of the internet was part of Microsoft’s Boards, managed virtual teams at the forefront of the Fortune 10 companies, and specialized in the most “User-Friendly” web creation standards of design by which millions of web designers today follow suit.

I left Microsoft affter “Seeing the light” in 2005 and since then quite honestly the GNU side of the market tends to be extremely technical, the most un-user-friendly web systems in the world, and lack so much on the side of truly well functioning standards in design that up until now, EVERY CMS the GNU market has offered has been junk. Take it for what its worth, but unless you have worked within the bowels of the highest levels of GNU’s competition, you have no place in passing judgement upon design differences in these markets.

The reason for my long winded message is both due to excitement, and tentativeness. Excitement because as I said, I believe you guys here may have FINALLY NAILED IT, and tentative because of the 1000’s of times my hopes were up only to be let down in a crashing demise because of the literal dysfunctional designs on nearly all GNU web based systems.

Hopefully some savvy WP/WB web guru will write a simple, straight forward and clear reply here in a decent amount of time, and then the WB team will follow up quickly with updates to the installer, directions etc.

I have a rather large contact list in this worlds market that is waiting for this last piece, and should you deliver, I promise you a surge in customer numbers beyond your imaginations.

Peace,

Cali

Cali, I’m in awe of your history. I hope I can help a little. I’m self-taught in all this, having learned HTML from looking at page source code back when Tim Berners-Lee was a pup. WordPress seems marvelous to me, and I’m sad that upgrading seems to be so difficult.

I’ve done 2 successful upgrades from 2.7.1 to 2.8.

First, I backed up everything in wp-content. That’s either in your root, if that’s where you have WordPress installed, or in whatever directory you put WP in. Here are some screencaps of the root and what’s inside wp-content.

Then I ran the automatic upgrade, and it all worked out. If I had had the problem others mentioned about the site not showing up at all, I think I would have just re-uploaded the theme I was using to the wp-content/themes directory. From what I can see, 2.8 doesn’t put things like themes or plugins anyplace different from 2.7.1.

I hope this helps. And thank you for all your visionary work at Microsoft. I’ve starting using a Mac recently, but I’ve always appreciated how MS brought computing to the masses and paved the way for the web.

Even with what you all have shared here it still is unclear. Perhaps SOMEONE can assist by replying back to this thread with CLEAR, CONCISE directions (WITH DIR STRUCTURES) showing us EXACTLY what goes where.

I thought was all pretty clear.

Here’s a basic directory layout:
wordpress-root/ (or just root)
wordpress-root/wp-includes/ (and other subdirs)
wordpress-root/wp-admin/ (and other subdirs)
wordpress-root/wp-content/
wordpress-root/wp-content/plugins/
wordpress-root/wp-content/plugins/name-of-plugin-1/
wordpress-root/wp-content/plugins/name-of-plugin-2/ (etc)
wordpress-root/wp-content/themes/
wordpress-root/wp-content/themes/name-of-theme-1/ (etc)

The only files you will probably ever want to touch will be in wp-content.

If you have a relatively modern host that works properly, then automatic upgrade along with the automatic plugin and theme installers built into WP 2.8 means you never really have to manually touch anything.

I’m not sure what you meant by updates to the installer. The installer works perfectly. The only updates to it are going to be to fix errors. Did you find an error? Have you reported it to the bug tracker?

There is an idea in the works to make a single-file new-installer for WP. Basically you put one file on your site, access it with a browser, then it downloads all the rest and such. But that’s for new installs only, not upgrades.

Otto42, some people are having trouble with the upgrade, including the first couple of posters in this thread. I have no idea if it’s the installer causing the problems, or maybe just conflicts with existing plugins or older themes.

That makes me wonder if there is an easy way to know if a given theme will work with an upgrade of WP.

That makes me wonder if there is an easy way to know if a given theme will work with an upgrade of WP.

Well, the most obvious way would be to create a test site and put that theme on it, then see if it works.

Everybody should create a test site. It’s not hard, you can do it on your own computer: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/252135?replies=8#post-1130432

I had the same issue Auto-upgrading from 2.7.x to 2.8. (blank screen). Haven’t tried 2.8.1 yet.

Here is a post that solved my issues (renaming plugin folder). At the time, ComicPress was the culprit.

White Screen of Death!