It seems there is quite a bit of frustration with the new “Add media” controls in WordPress 2.5

The 2.5.1 update didn’t fix them- but, at this point, enough people have griped that the development team has to know they laid an egg with this part.

I just grabbed this whole post from the support site to give you the run down, the link at the bottom of the post is from someone who choses much more colorful language to describe his experiences-

WordPress › Support » Problems/steps backward with Add Media functionality
I was quite eager to try the add media functions in v2.5, but it seems either I am missing something or there are some fundamental problems.

Add Video
This seems fundamentally broken. I cannot believe that any user would expect that this would only create a link to a video rather than embedding the actual video. The only good news seems to be that using YouTubes embed code now works in a post without needing to use a plug-in like Easy Tube.

Add an Image
While this works–and the ability to upload multiple images is a plus–the interface to produce even basic functionality seems to have taken a step backwards. Case in point: I wanted to upload an image and have it right-justified with text wrapping around it. I had to go through no less than three dialogue boxes to achieve this.

Step 1: A box for uploading the image and adding ALT text.

Step 2: Requires the user to then click on Gallery for the ability to edit ALT text again, plus set image link, size and basic justification. I am not sure why this cant be rolled into the first step and I am not sure why all the options for justification cant be included here.

Step 3: In order to get the text to wrap, I then need to select the places image, click on the Image button, which pops up a dialogue box similar to what we had in the previous version, which gives the kind of control over the image that SHOULD be in Step 2. And, oddly, the justification selected in Step 2 is not reflected in this dialogue box.

With 2.5, its suddenly more clicks and LESS intuitive than it was before to perform a pretty basic use of an image in a post. It really does seem like at least one of these three steps could be eliminated. In the end, I can get what I want, but now its more involved than it used to be, with a workflow that is not at first obvious.

Add Audio/Add Media
I have not tried these yet, but fear that Audio will produce similar results to video. And its not entirely clear what “Add Media” is for. Flash content? Something else?

But my real issue is with video and these extra steps in just using simple images. Unless someone can show me that I am missing something here. Any help welcome.

If you follow the link, there are some good comments- including mention of the “Flexible Upload” plug in which we are about to start testing.

For the more colorful post- I can’t even post the link- go here.

All of a sudden, you see your post and the previous posts all are in a different font, or your sidebar doesn’t appear in the right place. Did you just break Wordpress? Probably not.

What you most likely did was put code in your post that WordPress either doesn’t recognize or doesn’t like.  That’s because WordPress likes you to do the writing, and leave the formatting up to it. Here is some info on Validation from the WordPress Codex:

Validating a Website « WordPress Codex
Validation errors aren’t limited to your template files. They can also happen inside of a post. When you are writing a post and using HTML, WordPress might not recognize the HTML and convert it to a character entity, or you may have entered it wrong. If you have a page with a lot of HTML coding, validate it to make sure you have it all correct. And occasionally check random posts to make sure everything is still okay from time to time as part of your general housekeeping.

So, if you are trying to write about php code- WordPress will strip it out- thinking you are trying to run code where you shouldn’t. People who write about code, use a plugin to make code quotable.

The main problem is copying and pasting either from other sites, or from Microsoft Word. These pastes can contain all kinds of tags and formating that WordPress has no use for, or doesn’t understand, or conflicts with the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) built into your theme.

If you look to the right of your ? (help) icon in the toolbar- you will see the “Advanced Toolbar” button that will give you access to a whole bunch of formatting (and unformatting options). It’s here where you can underline text, add colors, use different heading tags- or remove formatting or clean up messy code.

So, if you see something looking wonky on your wordpress site, try the eraser tool- and remove formatting, before the panic, and try reformatting using only the tools that WordPress offers. If you are still finding errors- look in code view- and see if there are more than a few things that say MsoNormal, or Table or div or span in your code. Most of those are indicative of formatting problems.

Today we got the notification that netenberg had released the Fantastico updates for WordPress 2.3.1 after having 2.2.2 for the longest time. We’ve recently started using Fantastico to set up our initial installs of WordPress, but had done upgrades manually. Today, we tried the auto update feature for the first time- and have this warning: MAKE SURE TO DEACTIVATE ALL PLUGINS BEFORE RUNNING UPDATE. We’re not totally sure this guarantees an un-borked update, but, we’re pretty sure it helped after we reinstalled.

Fantastico is a script that runs from Cpanel on our server to help you automagically install a whole bunch of different Open Source software. It’s really handy, but, be prepared to be at least 30 days behind on most update packages (37 in this case).

Our main reason to switch to 2.3.1 was to familiarize ourselves with the new version of WordPress before the next seminar, but, I’ll give you the immediate highlights:

• ST Visualize Advanced Features plugin  is no longer required- giving everyone access to different levels of CSS tags, the paste from Word function, clean up mess code function, type color, etc.  It’s been a plugin we couldn’t live without- esp. for the glyph finder- so it’s easy to find the ©®™½€ etc.
• The plugin list now tells you if there is a newer version! Long overdue.
• The tag feature helps you organize your posts and categories with yet another tool.

I’m sure we’ll discover other great features as we explore- but, as a warning to all- always disable plugins before updating.

In case all of a sudden you start seeing strange characters instead of an apostrophe-there is a good chance it can easily be fixed by a simple tweak to your wp-config file.

In the move for global blog domination, WordPress began acknowledging character encoding for different languages- this excellent article will give you the answers you need to your broken WordPress install:

WordPress Charset Encoding Problem After Upgrading to Version 2.2 » My Digital Life
WordPress blogs that upgraded to Wordpress version 2.2 may encounter strange character set (charset) encoding problem where several characters especially apostrophes (’), quotation marks (”), and hyphens or dashes (—) are displayed as strange characters such as ’ or simply as question marks (?) when the posts are output to web pages. As you have probably suspected, the issue is caused by character encoding method used by WordPress 2.2 which supports setting of database collation and character set in WordPress config file.

We’ve been dealing with it sporadically on our server- and know how to fix it chop-chop. Just give us a call.

WordPress 2.2.1 may be “required” – but on every install, I wasn’t getting the visual text editor, TinyMCE to display. After uploading, re-uploading, clearing cache, shutting off the “use visual editor”- turning off and on plugins- I finally gave up and loaded Dean’s FCKEditor- which gives you all kinds of cool tools that aren’t easily available in TinyMCE. (See picture above).

I’ve been through a ton of WordPress upgrades- and most have been painless. This has not.

After spending 6 hours -I was able to update 4 installs successfully with TinyMCE – but gave up on the fifth and went with Dean’s solution.

No new features mentioned, but new security issues fixed.

With the new development schedule, we’re still looking about 6 weeks to the next “version”. The developers also assure us that the servers are now secure- and that we don’t have to worry about someone hacking the download again.

WordPress › Blog » WordPress 2.1.3 and 2.0.10
We have a security update release now available for both the 2.1 and 2.0 branches of WordPress now available for immediate download. This update is highly recommend for all users of both branches.

These releases include fixes for several publicly known minor XSS issues, one major XML-RPC issue, and a proactive full sweep of the WordPress codebase to protect against future problems.

And the best reason to updgrade 2.1.3- especially if you are getting the error message “could not execute ajax call server didn’t return valid xml”  when you try to use your WordPress 2.1.1 or 2.1.2 spellcheck- or Firefox 2.0 spell check- 2.1.3 allows the return of your Firefox 2.0 spell check.

Something happened in 2.1.1 and .1.2 that broke the spell check on some servers- 2.1.3 fixes it.

A client asked what happened to the undo button in Wordpress 2.1- I thought it disapeared with the autosave- but with a little help from Google- I found an “Easter egg” function in Wordpress.

WordPress 2.1 – More Editor Options » Solo Technology
Recently upgraded to WordPress 2.1 and pondering the WYSIWYG editor? Did you know there are more options there than what you first see? Me neither! But, thanks to “codeispoetry” in this support thread, I do now.

Go from this:

Basic toolbars

to this:

Advanced toolbar

PC users just hit alt-shift-v (Firefox) or alt-v (IE) to toggle it. Mac users- use cntrl-v (Firefox)

(Not seeing either of those? Visit Users → Your Profile and make sure that “Use the visual editor when writing” is checked. Still having problems? Visit the WordPress support forums.)

Pasting from word processors just became a whole lot easier. Two of the new buttons are “Paste as Plain Text” and “Paste from Word.” Nice for those who use such things. I like the custom character thing too. Now I can easily add ∞ whenever I need it…

WordPress released 2.0.6 yesterday- and it’s supposedly the last release before the much awaited 2.1

Apple users should be happy that Safari will now display quicktags- but, as always, Firefox is the browser of choice for WordPress users (and with Firefox 2.0 you get spell check!).

Development Blog › WordPress 2.0.6

Here’s what’s new:* The aforementioned security fixes.
* HTML quicktags now work in Safari browsers.
* Comments are filtered to prevent them from messing up your blog layout.
* Compatibility with PHP/FastCGI setups.

If you’d like Websitetology to upgrade your WordPress installation to 2.0.6. complete with back-up, and a review of your active plug-ins for latest versions, jump over to this link: http://blogosopher.com/?page_id=7

All of a sudden, my pretty quicktags bar stopped showing up. It was as if the Visual Rich Editor had been turned off.

I went to the Options>Writing> ” Users should use the visual rich editor by default” check box- and it was checked and nothing.

I searched Google for WordPress Visual Rich Editor not working, and WordPress Visual Rich Editor broken- and found posts about javascript being turned off, and something about WP MU. No help.

Stumbled across an “improved WYSIWG editor” plugin- and downloaded it- and was about to install it- out of frustration- when I read in it’s read me: disable the “use visual rich editor by default” in 2 places! Not just the “Options>Writing” menu- but also under the user menus. AHA! That was the answer- somehow, under my user profile the “Use Visual Rich Editor by default” box has become unchecked.

Checked it- hit save, and voila, my visual rich editor (TinyMCE) was fixed. Hope this helps someone else.