UMW Blogs Upgraded to WPMu 1.3

Well, it took long enough, but UMW Blogs is now running WordPress Multi-User version 1.3. We had to be a bit more careful with this upgrade because we are now supporting close to 800 blogs, so I actually took a page out of Patrick’s book (since I am on vacation and have had some down time 🙂 ) and set UMW Blogs up locally on my MacBook Pro –there’s a good tutorial being released currently for PC users here–but I used the M(ac)AMP option, and if I get a chance I’ll blog how I did it. It may be too soon to say, but thus far every thing seems to be running quite smoothly.

I did run into one issue that I think might be useful to others doing an upgrade. While the upgrade to 1.25a had some error messages dealing with vestigial multi-user plugins (or sitewide plugins that had been built into the core code), I had a similar error message for a regular plugin that was using widgets but was not compatible with WPMu 1.3x. The error message I received on one particular site running an incompatible plugin was as follows:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp_get_current_user()

and the file effected was

wp-includes/capabilities.php on line 446

If you see this error, chances are one of your plugins that also provides a widget is incompatible with the latest version of WPMu, keep in mind that it isn’t necessarily a mu-plugin as I found out after some trial and error. Also, read more about the details on the WPMu forums here. The particular plugin that caused the issue for me was a regular old plugin, in this case wp-contact, and once I deleted it the issue (what was only borking one blog) disappeared. What’s frustrating a little bit is that if you don’t have a good sense of the plugins you have made available on WPMu, you may have a hard time tracking down the culprit, which could be vexing.

On the bright side, this update fixed the Flickr Photo Album plugin’s uploading issues. So now when you install this powerful plugin (which you can see in action here), your uploading capabilities are no longer compromised -very cool. Moreover, there are a host of great new features with WPMu 1.3 as told by the WP Assist site (thoughts in italics added by me):

• Better admin controls for the signup page. It can be disabled in various ways. (This is key!)
• Upload space functions have been fixed. (I like it.)
• The signup form is now hidden from search engines which will help avoid certain types of spamming.
• Profile page now allows you to select your primary blog.
• Database tables are now UTF-8 from the start.
• If you’re using virtual hosts, the main blog doesn’t live at /blog/ any more.
• The WordPress importer now assigns posts to other users on a blog. (This is huge in my opinion)

What’s more is that we now have tags to work with. The possibilities for tags working alongside categories will be integral to several projects I have talked about with a couple of professors for next semester, and I really can’t wait to start playing around with them. But that will have to wait until I return from my vacation within a vacation, four days in Tuscany starting tomorrow. Ciao and Happy New Year!