bonniekirk

Great point about the Codex. I can report the error messages I encounter. But I don’t feel qualified to explain many I’ve had, nor can I document the places they can show up. Shall we add error messages as we encounter them and let other people fill in the blanks?

I understand about the self-hosting. But from reading comments in this forum and elsewhere, I think more than a few people have been enticed by the “5-minute install”, and really don’t know what they are getting into.

Yeah, I remember the fun in the plugin playground, too. Good times.

I think we’re side-stepping a few key points here.

A. Many installation error messages don’t give users enough information to know the problem is with the automatic routine, not the UPDATE itself. “Automatic update worked the last time. The problem must be 3.0.1.”

B. I couldn’t find any error messages on this thread on the “Codex:All System Messages” page. Seems like an oversight.

C. The cryptic error messages can be confusing and/or alarming. My reaction to “Could not create directory.: /public_html” was, “I hope not!!”

C. WordPress, especially the automatic update, seems highly sensitive to server configurations. Perhaps error messages could tell me what caused the update to fail.

D. Being able to follow directions for “copying files” doesn’t mean a user is confident they can troubleshoot the 3-step update process, much less the 14-step extended update instructions if something goes wrong.

WordPress has come a long way. Congratulations to all the team! But it is Open Source software. The documentation improves all the time, though it’s thin in places, i.e. installation error messages. 3.0 was more rigorously tested, yet some things may have been missed in 3.0.1. Given the posts and tweets about 3.0.1 installation problems, there must be a lot of “wildly weird setups” in the community.

Unfortunately the price of widespread acceptance is increased demand for well-documented software that is easy to use and bullet-proof. Welcome to the top of the bell curve in the technology adoption life cycle.

The upgrade also failed for me, on 2 installations, for 2 different reasons, both running on the same shared host. NEITHER site is stuck in maintenance mode.

Like for dimeco, the upgrade failled on the first site because it could not copy theme-editor.dev.css.

The second failed because it “Could not create directory.: /public_html”.

After the first upgrade failed, I thought it would either be a permissions issue, or a function of the theme I’m using. Now I’m just baffled. Since the upgrade is for minor issues, I will probably wait to revisit this upgrade until more experienced people sort this out.

Here’s what ASO’s tech support instructed me to do, which worked:

Hostname: WP had inserted “http”, but this had to be my website address

Username & Password: replace what WP filled in with cPanel login information.

WP is asking for this everytime I install a plugin now. Since it doesn’t seem to be happening for everyone, including everyone whose blogs are hosted by A Small Orange, I’m guessing there is a problem somewhere. Since this is not a shared computer, I allowed my browser to save the username and password information, though WordPress may do that on its own.

Hope this helps.

I’m experiencing the same thing. Host is A Small Orange. Upgrades have worked fine without a ftp connection.

I have 2 WP installations, neither on the root.

So, I guess we’re on our own here? I see this issue is “not resolved”.

Last night I sent PollDaddy support a question because I am also getting the Catchable fatal error. This morning I got this reply:

We are about to launch a new version of that plugin on Monday hopefully. It should fix any issues you have be experiencing.

This was a prompt response, so I’m hopeful. I’m going to leave my plugin installed so WordPress will inform me when an update is available.

Moderators: there is another thread on this same issue. I am also posting this reply there.

Last night I sent PollDaddy support a question because I am also getting the Catchable fatal error. This morning I got this reply:

We are about to launch a new version of that plugin on Monday hopefully. It should fix any issues you have be experiencing.

This was a prompt response, so I’m hopeful. I’m going to leave my plugin installed so WordPress will inform me when an update is available.

Moderators: there is another thread on this same issue. I am also posting this reply there.

charissaproctor is right. Pasting the code provided into style.css does not fix the alignment problem. I think what may be getting missed here is the fact that within the editor the alignment appears to be correct. But when the page is displayed in either Internet Explorer or Google Chrome, the image appears at the left, with no text wrapping, no matter what alignment options have been selected.

And I doublechecked. The css.style file change was saved. And I did not start a new paragraph after the image.

Example: https://abetteradvocate.com/a-mouse-in-the-house-an-autistic-questions-perceptions-about-behavior/

The Plugin Installer did not work at all for me until my hosting company enabled php5 for my account. Now it seems to be working fine.

Bingo! PROBLEM SOLVED! I don’t know how you figured this out, but I’m hoping something we documented here will get picked up by the search engines for other people.

I got your message. will try that now. Thanks, kay9

I forgot to add, clearing the cache and deleting cookies did not work before, but I will try it again before reinstalling.

Thanks.

Michael,

Thanks for the heads up about the contact form. Broken plugin, and my attempts to upload new version are taking forever.

I can already see a difference. Neither the installation that works, nor the installation that doesn’t are in in wordpress folders. Let me try deleting the installation that isn’t working, and reinstall with a structure like you have.

If problem continues, and I can get this plugin uploaded, I’ll let you know.

Thank you for your offer and assistance so far.

@whoami, I guess we have a semantic problem. I don’t know what other words @kay and I can use besides icons and graphics. Specifically, to recap our first posts:

– the WordPress logo graphic is missing from every page. That’s not a usability issue, but it should be a clue to someone

– the media icons are missing from the write and edit pages and the quickpress box on the dashboard page. The standard “missing graphic” symbol appears in place of each, so I have to rely on hover tips to tell me if I’m clicking on the right button. This is a usability issue

– the theme thumbnails are missing, which would be a usability issue if I had not already chosen a theme.

– The problems persist whether I use Chrome or IE7; my system is Windows XP. My ISP’s Help Support recreated the problem with Chrome under Vista, but the problems do not exist with Firefox under Vista and Linux. (For some reason my computer won’t run Firefox, or I would have already tried that.)

– These things only happen on our second (newest) installations. The first installations are fine.

I think we have pretty thoroughly documented our attempts to fix the problem.

@kay, are you using Windows XP, Vista, or something else?