Update 31 Mar 2005: All the issues addressed below have been marked resolved by the WordPress developers. You can test a nightly dated 2005-04-01 or later if you want to verify resolution.
Since 1.5.1 and later are released, and fix the problems addressed here, this software should be considered historical.
Update 11 Mar 2005: The issues with pages have been marked resolved by the WordPress developers. I have not yet seen a resolution for the issues with categories. I have every confidence that all of these issues will be fixed in the eventual 1.5.1 release. You can test a nightly dated 2005-03-10 or later if you want to verify resolution, but for production sites (i.e. your blog) Ellington remains your best bet for the moment.
Not long ago, the WordPress team released version 1.5 of their semantic personal publishing platform (that’s a fancy name for blog). I have been a fan of WordPress since the first time I laid eyes on it, and have occasionally contributed a patch here, a plugin there, and today, I’m contributing criticism and code.
Originally I was going to write here about some of the last minute changes that went into the 1.5 release, exactly how they were broken, and why it’s a bad thing to introduce new features less than 24 hours before you ship a product. But that’s whining, and I figured it would be better to actually do something about it.
In particular, two changes to WordPress 1.5, checked in just hours before the official
release, caused pages and categories to break in various ways. No one got a chance to test these changes before they were rolled out to everyone as the final “Strayhorn” release. What happened is simple: The last nightly build before release was dated 2005-02-14, the new code was checked in, and then someone created the “official” release archives. How? Why? I don’t know. I just want my category pages and my static pages to work right.
So I got my hands dirty and went digging through the changes made between 2005-02-14 and 2005-02-15 strayhorn, all 1930 lines of them. After yanking out the new, broken features, I have created a new release of WordPress 1.5. Codenamed “Ellington,” it is identical to 1.5 Strayhorn in every respect, except for the removal of the new page cache and category cache code which caused various problems for people trying to use those features.
It’s my intention that this code should be used as an interim solution only, until the WordPress developers come up with fixes for the code in question, and should only be used by those people needing a fix for categories and static pages. Otherwise, continue to use 1.5 Strayhorn.
You have three options for obtaining 1.5 Ellington. You can download the usual .tar.gz or .zip files, or you can download a patch file which can be used to update an existing Strayhorn installation to Ellington. (This is only appropriate for those people comfortable with the UNIX command line, or the WP developers themselves.)
Before you download I also want to clarify one thing: This release is completely unofficial. To the best of my knowledge, it is not endorsed by the WordPress development team (although some of them have visited here). While the changes I have made are actually quite minimal, it is entirely possible I have made a mistake, and my mistakes should not reflect poorly upon WordPress or the WordPress developers. Their mistakes, however, are a different story… ;-)
Here’s hoping that all of your experience with WordPress is happy and trouble-free. Enjoy!
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Feb 27, 2005
Guillermo Moreno || GMoreno.com » Blog Archive » Wordpress 1.5 Ellington
craig
Feb 27, 2005
Have you submitted your changes to the WordPress developers? If you are not aware, there is a hackers’ mailing list you can subscribe to at: http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo/wp-hackers.
Kudos to you for doing something constructive and not simply complain! That’s great to see!
Michael Hampton
Feb 27, 2005
The page cache and category cache are a great idea, and my release simply backs out the changes. Long-term, they should remain, but be fixed. There is also a user cache in the new code, but as far as I can see, it works properly. I’ve already posted my bug report to mosquito, where as of today it remains in “new” status. But some people (like myself) need a fix NOW.
Feb 27, 2005
SteamedPenguin: Not Your Usual Meal » Blog Archive » A WordPress Patch
Feb 28, 2005
Zootropo » Solución a los problemas con las páginas y categorÃas en Wordpress 1.5
Gary
Feb 28, 2005
This is great, but a question: since the official release ended up as the 2-17 release, do you know if this was fixed anyway in the now “official” strayhorn release of 2-17?
Feb 28, 2005
Planeta WordPress » Blog Archive » Solución a los problemas con las páginas y categorÃas en Wordpress 1.5
Michael Hampton
Feb 28, 2005
Gary, the copy of strayhorn currently being distributed from wordpress.org (as of this very minute) matches exactly the reference copy I downloaded on 17 Feb and used when creating this package. In other words, no, these are not fixed in strayhorn. If they were, I wouldn’t have needed to do anything, now would I? :)
The text seems to imply that strayhorn was released on 15 Feb, which is incorrect. Ellington was created using code from 2005-02-14, the last nightly in which pages and categories worked properly, and strayhorn, rather than 2005-02-15.
See, I am capable of making mistakes! Thanks for pointing this out.
Mar 02, 2005
The Inhuman Equation :: Hyvännäköinen III
Mar 04, 2005
The Inhuman Equation :: Hyvännäköinen III
Gary
Mar 04, 2005
Very cool…I’m thinking about doing a stripped psuedo-CMS version (pull everything related to comments, tbacks, members, unnecessary archives, etc.), since I’ve got some sites ahead that I want to use WP for and they will be normal sites. But if you’re bored and want to take a crack at it……
Michael Hampton
Mar 05, 2005
It wasn’t my intention to fork WordPress at all, just to provide an interim solution for a couple of the more serious bugs I got bitten by (as did a lot of other people as well). I fully intend to install 1.5.1 when it’s available, assuming it actually works and they don’t check in any showstopper bugs at the last minute. :)
Gary
Mar 10, 2005
Yea, that can be problematic later. Unfortunately, it looks like I’m going to give up on WP as the engine for my quasi-CMS sites…it’s just way too buggy. I get nervous having to hack here, tweak there, to get some things working while major things such as comment moderation, pinging, and category-based permalinks don’t work properly. I’ll continue (maybe) using it on my own sites where I mind less having to do so much work to make it functional, but I’m not about to put it out there under clients and then face dealing with upgrading a highly hacked product when the time comes. I whined loudly about MT’s fee structure, but I’ve spend 20 times the value in time fixing WP in ways I never had to with MT. /rantoff