STOP! Read Me Before You Upgrade to WP 3.4

[cindybidar]

Hey our super-fab Mod Angie Newton posted a thread over on the Elite side about her blog links breaking after she upgraded to WP 3.4. Turns out she uses this permalink structure: /%post_id%/%postname% as recommended by Lynn. I use it myself, so I helped her troubleshoot.

It looks like the upgrade to 3.4 breaks the short version of the links. So http://yourdomain.com/1234 will no longer work. You'll have to use the whole thing.

Just FYI. I'm going to look into it a bit more to see if there's any word from WP. Will post back as I learn more.

[angienewton]

Thank you so much for checking on this! I tweeted them today but of course I didn't hear anything lol

I'm not reverting back YET but I will have some broken links out there while I wait. UGH Why do they not check these things before they put out new versions?:p

[CarolineJ]

It looks like the upgrade to 3.4 breaks the short version of the links. So http://yourdomain.com/1234 will no longer work. You'll have to use the whole thing.


Hi there Cindy, I read Angie's thread this morning. I use the custom permalink of /%postname%/ and this seems OK. As a matter of interest, what does /%post_id%/%postname% do?

I don't normally upgrade as soon as the version is released but I apparently seem to have just done that. At the same time Yoast had an upgrade to his SEO plugin and it would appear that the last post on my Blog does not show if the Yoast plug in is activated. If I deactivate it, the post shows up??

I've put a message on the WP Forum, but it'll be a while since I hear back, I guess. Do you have any thoughts on why this might be? All ideas gratefully received. BTW - is it possible to revert back to the previous WordPress version?

Caroline :)

[nar321]

I agree with Angie that testing for custom permalinks problems should be a high priority with WP before releasing any upgrades

[nar321]

CarolineJ I would hang in there as Yoast is usually on top of this sort of thing and will issue a upgrade or whatever is needed to clear this up. Also I would post your problem on his site. http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/

[nar321]

Please do note that this problem presently applies only to any WordPress users who have used a custom setting for permalinks. Not all WP upgrades are Security upgrades and as shown it often pays to wait and see if problems are created by the upgrade. Reverting back to a previous version is not as easy( as most upgrades are.) to accomplish.

[cindybidar]

Just to be clear, not ALL custom permalinks are broken. It's ONLY a problem in a very specific circumstance. If you have the permalinks set to /%post_id%/%postname% so your URLs look like this: yourdomain.com/1234/your-post-title - That alone is fine, and will continue to work.

The problem is that one of the reasons to use this permalink structure is so you can shorten the above link to just yourdomain.com/1234. That link should still take you to the post. With this update, though, the short version isn't working any more.

What's not clear to me is if this is a supported feature in WP, or just a handy side-effect that simply doesn't work any more.

[cindybidar]

WooHoo! Thanks to Regina Smola and Gary Cornelisse, we have resolved this with a small hack to the .htaccess file.

Remember, you only need to do this if you're giving people a link to your blog that looks like this: http://yoursite.com/123

Okay - here's the .htaccess code (back up your files first, please):

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RedirectMatch 301 ^/(\d+)/$ http://YOURDOMAIN.com/?p=$1
RedirectMatch 301 ^/(\d+)$ http://YOURDOMAIN.com/?p=$1

</IfModule>

[nataliea]

Ok, I think I am about to faint. .Htaccess files make me crazy. I have yet to conquer them. Cindy, are you up for fixing this for me?

[ChristineCobb]

@Caroline -- do you by any chance have WP Super Cache? You might try clearing your cache. I also had this issue before upgrading WP with the setting to not cache for known users. As soon as I deselected that setting, the issue cleared up.

[DebraLloyd]

FYI all - Andy Bailey told me this morning he is working on an update to Comment Luv to address an issue with that re the WP3.4 update also - he's been working it and will have a CommentLuv update tomorrow to fix the conflict but it appears to only affect users who are also running a Caching plugin along with Comment Luv.

Cheers,
Debra

[CarolineJ]

@Caroline -- do you by any chance have WP Super Cache? You might try clearing your cache. I also had this issue before upgrading WP with the setting to not cache for known users. As soon as I deselected that setting, the issue cleared up.

Hi Chris - which particular issue are you referring to - the disappearing post?
It's academic though because I don't have W3 Super Cache on the site. Like a few PlugIns they are created by technically competent people, but often they forget that non-technical people - that would be me :) - use them & don't understand how to set up the plugin.

I did have this Plugin on the site at one point, but because I hadn't got it set up correctly, it actually slowed the site down and so I took it off. At which point would I need to put in on the site do you reckon? I can't be doing with learning about stuff until I need to as I either forget it and usually there's more pressing things to do.

Caroline :)

[Henrik Flensborg]

In my line of work we always operate with a 3-tier landscape: Development->Test->Production (and sometimes even a Sandbox and a QA server thrown in)

Overkill ofc for most businesses based on WP, but a 2-tier approach with Dev/Test->Production is easy to work with.

Dev/Test is where you implement new plugins, upgrade plugins, themes and WP itself - so you can test it before going live in Production.

Given the vast number of combinations of WP versions, plugins, widgets, themes, PHP versions, DB versions, custom mods etc you can almost be certain that your exact combination haven't been tested by the WP team and all the plugin, widget and theme developers.

So to protect your productive environment from going belly up it makes sense to do your own integration testing.

[balsimon]

WooHoo! Thanks to Regina Smola and Gary Cornelisse, we have resolved this with a small hack to the .htaccess file.

Remember, you only need to do this if you're giving people a link to your blog that looks like this: http://yoursite.com/123


Thank you! - That fixed it for me.
- Bal