A New Day, A New Set of Problems
During an attempt to upgrade the version of WordPress running on this blog from version 2.2 to 2.3, a Database failure problem was temporarily created. This blog has recovered from this conversion failure problem, but then experienced a new set of problems for a brief period of time.
The search feature after our successful WordPress version upgrade stopped working. The search feature has since been corrected. It is now even easier to use than ever. We are now offering basic search capability, as well as an optional advanced search feature. You can select advanced search from the footer of each webpage, as well as from the search results page.
Category Failure
We briefly experienced a new Category failure problem. About 99% of all our old categories were suffering from an invalid Category ID. They were still there, and yet they were not there. They worked part of the time, but not where it counts the most.
WordPress version 2.3 introduced some fundamental database table changes. It turned out that one of the plugins was causing a database error every time a category was clicked. I was able to save the plugin simply by upgrading. Our current tag coding is functional, but offers no website display benefit.
The first step to correct the category problem was to manually add back all the old categories as new categories, so that they will be showing up in the category listings. And, then to manually reassign all the old posts to the respective new categories.
Categories Were A Royal Mess
In WordPress, there are Categories and then there are Link Categories. Why two entirely different sets of categories are necessary at all in WordPress is totally beyond me. But, apparently most of mine were entered one way or the other as a Link Category when they should have been a Category. So, I used different naming conventions in order to make the two groups distinctly different. Link Categories have a very long name, whereas I have named my Categories with a shorter name in order to clearly point out which is which. And, a handful were neither. They had a category description and slug, yet are somehow invisible.
I thought all this trouble over nothing was absurd. I use link categories extensively, yet never manage to display their names, descriptions, or slugs. I basically had to set up the same link structure twice: once in categories and then again in link categories in order that the links displayed are on topic for each category.
It took a while to sort the category mess out.
On topic links are now displaying on the category pages. So, this blog has offically completed the conversion process successfully.
