WordPress Theme Upgrade Problems

I thought we were in for it. I thought that this website had been ran through with a mean virus. Luckily, I thought wrong.

On New Year’s Day I did a virus scan of my WordPress theme template files. A few things came up. Some of them looked to be viruses. Though they had not shown any evident impacts, I still wanted them slayed and buried, or for them to justify their presence.

I began researching how to get rid of them. I updated my WordPress Installation to 2.9. The administrative area of my site then flipped and flopped and stabbed itself in the gut.

I broke it.

I was then in New Jersey, 10 minutes before boarding a bus to New York City. I had no time to deal with deep site issues. I boarded the bus and went to the city.

For the entire weekend I could not bear to open up the computer, for I knew well what laid inside: an entire day of banging my head up against a wall trying to fix something.

I hung out with friends instead. Though I must admit that I secretly worried about the site.

What if I could not fix it? What if my tenure of publishing on the internet was doomed to meet its end?

I told my wife Chaya that I was worried — I had put all of my eggs into this website monster. She told me to drink another beer and go smash bottles on the roof of our friend’s apartment. I listened.

Monday morning arrived and I found myself back at my paternal home in Western, New York. I found myself with no place else to look but into the bugs under the covers of this travelogue.

Thinking that my problems were caused by a virus, I dug into re-uploading the entire blog. I was scared to do so — understandable.

For a few hours I milled about with backing and re-backing everything up. I went for an expedient solution and tried to import an xml copy of this travelogue to a dummy (tester) blog that I had made for this purpose. The file was too big.

This would mean that I would have to delete and then re-upload the entire database to a new WordPress installation. I would just delete the entire thing and then put it all back up.

I checked my provisions — I had a new backup of the database. I got ready to delete the entire blog. I got cold feet.

Then I notice that my installation on my server was not updated. It said that I was still running WordPress version 2.9 rather than the 2.9 that I had uploaded “on site” through the automatic updater.

Hmm . . . maybe?

I tried it. I clicked “upgrade” in the database menu.

It updated.

I checked the administrative panel.

It worked.

Apparently, the automatic upgrader in the WordPress Admin panel did not fully upgrade the installation.

For safe measure I deleted the theme that I was working with that had the “potential” viruses, and then reloaded it.

I did a virus scan. It checked out good.

Now it was time to re-customize the site.

It is 9 PM and I am finished.

Back in the saddle.

An explanation of the gap in this “daily” travel column.