WordPress 2.5
So you may be wondering what’s going on here at Banapana since things have been up and down and changing and disappearing. There are two things going on. One, I’ve installed the new version of WordPress (2.5)–more on that in a minute. The other thing is a general change in the way that this blog is structured. Banapana has always been about the relationship between media and cognitive psychology (though it has wandered from the subject from time to time). So, my aim, with this new WordPress installation is to really shift things into a tighter focus. There will be better categories, new icons and a completely new design. (This current design is a theme borrowed from the excellent designer over at N.Design studio.
So that’s what’s changing around here. On to WordPress 2.5; before I dump praise on it, let me tell you that it is a slightly different kind of upgrade if you’ve been running WordPress. WordPress upgrades tend to be brilliantly easy—so easy that I got lazy and was doing upgrades with Fantastico. Press-a-button-upgrades are just my style. Unfortunately, I wasn’t doing a good job of backing things up and keeping a running list of my plugins and where they came from. Long story short, when I tried to go from the Fantastico WordPress 2.3.1 installation to a manually installed WordPress 2.5… BLURP! Internal Server Error 500. How I dread the Internal Server Error. No problem. I made a database backup, irradicated the Fantastico installation, “manually” upgraded to 2.5 and then carefully wrote over most of the tables in the database. Problem solved. Sort of. I (in my own sloppiness) also managed to destroy my custom theme and lose all my plugins. Oh well, I was re-designing the site anyway, right?
So far my experience with 2.5 is just fantastic. The admin pages are just so much cleaner, just so much more easy on the eyes. I can’t wait to upgrade my clients; they’re going to love the new backend look. Despite the pain of the experience (and I have no one to blame but myself) I’m really happy I did it. So, stay tuned, I hope to debut the new look by this weekend!