Upgrade from 2.1.x -> 2.6 caused category names to blank & “-2-2-2-2-2…”

Bump! This is a big deal, for me!

Same thing happened to me. Looks like I’ll be submitting a ticket to my host for a restore of yesterdays sql file

hello. Please read the guidelines before upgrading your WordPress installation. I hope you made a back up of your files and database before upgrading. Change design to default theme because the default theme will be upgraded as well.

Recommend that you upgrade from 2.1 to 2.6 a step at a time. Btw, I assume that having read the install
1) upgrade from 2.1 to 2.2 then check the posts and files – backup sql and files
2) upgrade from 2.2. to 2.3 then check the posts and files – backup sql and files
3) upgrade from 2.3 to 2.5.1 then check posts and files – backup sql and files
4) upgrade from 2.5.1 to 2.6 then check posts and files – backup sql and files.

That said, that’s the conservative way and it worked for friend’s site when I helped her upgrade from 2.2 to 2.6. Slow but sure plus saved me from a lot of stress ??

You can get previous WordPress versions at https://www.ads-software.com/download/release-archive/
Good luck.

Thanks, mercime, I’ll give that a shot. It’ll be tedious, but worth it, assuming it works.

I know I made a backup of my database first, so even if I forgot to backup the code, I should just be able to overwrite it with that particular version and be ok. In theory. ??

Trip report to follow, as soon as I find time to run through all of that.

Hmmm, too late I am afraid on my end, I went from 1.5 to 2.6 and I have -2-2-2 things everywhere. I backed up as well but things are toast.

If you’ve backed up files and SQL, then all is not lost. There’s still hope ??

So … for the sake of argument … what would be the solution to this if you were very bad and had not backed up your database?

For the sake of argument? Cry.

Solution would be to ask your webhost tech people to retrieve SQL from last week (or before) of the database you were using for WordPress and send to you – that is, assuming that they know what they are doing. Good luck.

Trip report:

I successfully restored my original database backup (made just before my original attempt at upgrading) and the file-system backup. I then went into my wp-admin, deactivated all plugins, and switched to the default theme. (<– These suggestions should be added to the upgrade documentation)

I then downloaded all of the major updates since 2.1 (2.2, 2.3, 2.4, …) skipping the point releases (2.2.1, 2.2.2, …) from: https://www.ads-software.com/download/release-archive/ and unzipped each to its own directory.

I uploaded 2.2, hit /wp-admin/upgrade.php on my site, ran the upgrade, tested my site to make sure posts still showed up in their correct categories, backed up the database (no need to backup files), and repeated the process for 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, and eventually 2.6.

It was tedious, but at least this way, everything went off without a hitch.

Of course some of my old plugins aren’t compatible, but at least my data is correct, and I can work from here.

Hey congratulations atuttle, glad it worked for you! Slow but sure ?? Cheers.

I’m having this same problem on like 3-4 of my bigger traffic sites.
I upgraded FINALLY to avoid being hacked.. and this happened. ??
*cries*

Did you backup SQL?

I’ve been seeing this happen to every blog I’ve upgraded that was a version prior to 2.3 (I don’t know if it effects 2.3 or not, I haven’t done any 2.3 -> 2.6 upgrades yet.) So far I can confirm that this bug impacts upgrades from 2.1.* and 2.2.* going to 2.6 directly. Whatever is causing this it wasn’t in the 2.5 upgrade code as upgrading to 2.5, then to 2.6 keeps the category information intact.

Just to confirm for those running into this: it’s safe to go from 2.1.* and 2.2.* to 2.5, then to upgrade from 2.5 to 2.6.

I do wish I could find a bug listed about this, I’m not sure the devs realize this bug exists yet or not. ??

buggy sure — but then again, its a bug thats introduced by people not keeping up with general wordpress housekeeping chores aka upgrading as the upgrades are released. Maybe thats better called penance.