Do Not Install WordPress 3.0 Until You Read This
WordPress 3.0
Straight, no chaser – this is the dictum of the latest version of WordPress.
Just like any drinking session, sometimes a well planned event can lead into some unfavorable consequence. This is what happened when I tried to upgrade BlogDeManila.com from WordPress 2.9.2 to WordPress 3.0 or known as “Thelonious”.
Right after I read the email from Matt (founder of WP) that the latest WP 3.0 is already released, I was excited to install it immediately. Without a second thought, I login on BlogDeManila dashboard and quickly click on the Please Update Now link and chose the Upgrade Automatically (1)since I’m used in upgrading WP plugins automatically instead of downloading them manually on my laptop. I even ignored the warning sign - Important: before upgrading, please backup your database and files (3). By the way, I even clicked on bulk Upgrade for my plugins (2).
Blog De Manila WordPress Dashboard
The upgrade was a blaze! It was the fastest WP upgrade I’ve ever seen. It’s finished in less than 2 minutes, much faster than the famous 5 minutes fresh installation. Like a shot of whiskey – straight up.
The difference is visually visible. I looked around the new Admin dashboard and played with the promised easy and friendly drag-and-drop menus. It’s so cool! I’m very much delighted for being able to organize the navigational menus.
The interface is much lighter than the previous version. It seems it has more white spaces and lighter menus.
I started to delete some comments but after clicking on the “spam” the dashboard turn into a black page. No errors, no warning, just plain blank page. I thought WP 3.0 is still working on the background perhaps trying to mix some vodka. After some few seconds, I realized there’s no more activity on my browser. I can’t logout from the dashboard since everything is gone. I’m not hallucinating due from this “drinking” session. The closest thing to do whenever you are on this situation is escape.
I closed my browser hoping that WP 3.0 will return to it’s senses. I logged in again and yes, everything seems back to normal and the spam I deleted is gone. I tried to delete another spam comment and boom…I got the blank page again.
I called Mr. Google but unfortunately, he’s not aware WP3.0 is already in town. I searched high and low, gave up and searched again. I was not able to get help from Mr. G.
The reality sinks in.
Finally, I searched from the source of WP3.0. I’ve found out that plain vodka of WP 3.0 doesn’t mix well with some flavored plugins. The blank page nausea is called White Screen of Death.
The solution to WP 3.0 hallucination ( nice rhyme, isn’t?).
If you forgot to deactivate the plugins before the upgrade, try to rename the plugins one by one until you find the culprit. Another trick is, rename your plugins folder to plugins-old through FTP and see if that fixes it. Next, login to your WP admin and see if the blank page is gone. If yes, make a new plugins folder and copy your plugins back, one at a time, testing each copy after activating them.
Luckily for BlogDeManila, the first plugin on the dashboard list is the source of the problem. After renaming it, the blank page is gone. BlogDeManila can live without that particular plugin than a blank Admin page.
Here’s the list of some plugins that can’t fully mix and match with the latest flavor or Wp3.0, based on other bloggers experience.
- Ajax Comment Posting
- W3 Total Cache
- Sociable
- Ravatars
- WP Tuner
- HeadSpace 2
- Podcasting Plugin by TSG – an update is provided already.
- Nextgen Gallery
If you notice, there’s really nothing wrong with Wp3.0. The problem is that some plugins developers (and other themes too) were not able to update their source code to work with the latest WP.
If you know any plugins that is making a havoc or if you are having a problem with WP 3.0, just write your comment here so we can update the list.
Even with this hiccup, I still consider WP 3.0 the fastest, sexiest and smoothest version ever!
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“Theme My Profile” is another plugin that caused a blank page after upgrading to WP 3.0.
thanks for the heads-up, Biggi!
I haven’t upgraded mine. Still in the process of editing my theme to maximize the new features. I am using WP 3.0 offline, didn’t encounter White Screen of Death with the plugins, although there were several notices about deprecated functions used
Hopefully I won’t encounter bigger problems when I upgrade my blog in the coming days. Siguro naman by that time, marami ng updated na plugins. 
I have three WP blogs and I upgraded all of it to 3.0 and I encounter no any problem or whatsoever.
Thanks, Eric. I’m passing this along to my students. It’s always good to remember to check your plugins before updating.
This is an amazing post I must comment. Specially for WordPress beginners and developers like us.
Thanks for the heads up regarding W3 Total Cache not working on WordPress 3.0! I’ve made it a practice/habit to not immediately upgrade WordPress unless its a security release. I also make it a point that all the plugins I use are up-to-date or are compatible with the latest version of WP.
I don’t know what caused my problems; I did not get the WSOD, the BSOD, or any other SOD – but my blog slowed to a CRAWL. Tech support couldn’t exactly pin down the cause, and there didn’t really seem to BE a good explanation. I was thinking maybe it was a widget (like Networked Blogs – lots of little avatar images loading from Facebook) or a plug-in or (heaven forbid) the graphics from my freshly customized theme.
Of course, the wordpress.org support folks always suggest switching to the default theme and disabling all the plug-ins FIRST. Well, I spent too much time and effort customizing my theme to ditch it, and my plug-ins were just FINE, thanks, before the “upgrade,” so this idea made me feel a little twitchy. I decided just to downgrade.
Unfortunately, that didn’t go too smoothly. I thought it was just me, until Jaypee had trouble doing it, too. He finally tamed the beast that is my blog and made it fetch and play nice. It’s happily – and QUICKLY – running under 2.9.2 again.
I’m never “upgrading” again. (Okay, maybe after six months and a few shots of that vodka you’ve got over there…)
i am not always attracted to the latest updates. but maybe, i’ll update once i have the time. i don’t have any of the plug-ins you mentioned here. so i expect smoother transition.
That’s interesting about the plugins, because I thought if you used the automatic update that it shut down all plugins before updating. The one blog of mine that could update on its own went fine, as I don’t use any of the plugins you mentioned. My other two, whenever I get around to it, I’ll have to update the old way, which of course means to remember to turn all plugins off first.
Thanks for the heads up.
Hi,
Similar problem to described… traced it to ‘events calendar’ plug in… deleted files and site restored…
Cheers
Andrew
I have not done yet upgraded to wordpress ..thanks for advice! Now I’m ready to go to version 3.0
I wanted to point out that W3 Total Cache works fine with my WP 3.0
I am facing the exact problem similar with yours. Looking aroung Big-G, no luck to find a working solution. Will try to rename the plugins and test it out one-by-one. Really a good leason to me that NOT TO install any upgrade as soon as the release. Thank You!
I manage to get the White Screen of Death several times on a new install (after installing some plugins). The weird thing is that it is different plugins that causing the White Screen of Death. On two separate installations : On the first one, it is Contact form 7 (after installing “Contact Form” and then deleting it since I took the wrong plugin). On the second installation, it is E-commerce (but only after uninstall and then reinstall).
Deleting the source files solves the problem, but hey.. I want the plugins
Hi Christian,
You might want to try the following:
1) Delete the plugins from the plugin directory
2) Log into php MyAdmin and delete the tables associated with the old plugins
3) Reinstall the plugins
I’ve had issues in the past related to how the old plugins installed their database tables, and deleting these tables helps you to do a “clean install” of the plugins. Also, be sure to check the plugin websites to be sure that they have upgraded and tested on WP 3.0. WordPress.org may also have some comments in their forums about issues people are having with the plugins that might be helpful. Certainly with Contact 7 and wp e-commerce, there are bound to be other people experiencing similar issues.
Thanks for your respond! I managed to fix my problems, it had to do with the memory. See http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php#Increasing_memory_allocated_to_PHP for solution
I wish I had read this prior to upgrading to 3.0. I got the fatal ‘white screen,’ and the plug-ins that were throwing the errors were ‘All in one SEO,’ ‘Gravatars,’ ‘link within,’ I cannot remember the other, oh yeah, the WP Total Cache. I thought that it was my theme, but it worked perfectly prior to this upgrade. So, I don’t know. My site has not been functional for a few days now. Thanks for the heads up, however too late for me. We can’t go back to the prior upgrade. It is no longer available.
You can always download older versions of WordPress here: http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Versions and manual install the older version. If you upgraded your database, you may need to restore from a backup of your database. So, if you really needed to go back to 2.9.2, you could do a clean install of that and then import your old db backup.
Thanks Angela! That was very helpful. What I done was keep the WP 3.0 version, done a clean install with the plug-ins deactivated/deleted, even wiping their files from my server, and re-installed! So far, so good
WP 3.0 is a total failure if you ask me. I had just installed it that there was RED EVERYWHERE!!
I’m reverting to 2.9.2 since all my other sites are on this version and works like a charm, error free. Also, expect to see spikes in your server. It uses a LOT of resources. Good luck backing up your work because it won’t happen, you will need to FTP to your computer. You’d be better off just to save your text and images and start from scratch.
This reminds me of when Facebook does upgrades, nothing works and takes month to get it back to normal.
-If it ain’t broken, no need to fix it
-Stick with what already works.
MSN Hotmail hasn’t changed in what, 10 years? It’s never down either and they robably never get any complaints. Hopefully WP will get the picture. So now I have lost over 18 hours of work because of that crap. Thank god I had just installed, had no choice but didn’t lose anything important. Glad I didn’t upgrade my other sites to 3.0. Also the WP forum is down, go figure.
Poorly written plugins may have extra spaces in their files that are outside of the PHP tags. I’ve found this to be the major culprit of blank page syndrome.
Also – if you’ve been modifying your theme’s functions.php file…
Check the Functions.php file for blank lines. Make sure there are no blank lines outside the “ tags.
You’re right! I had problems with W3 Total Cache. Was told it’s not supposed to be activated when you upgrade to 3. NOW THEY TELL ME! Wished they’d informed earlier!
I’ve done almost everything I could. Rename, removed plugin, checked my error logs, htaccess file. Still no clue…my wp-admin page is still a blank!
I ran into the white screen of death after installing W3 Total Cache. Its disappointing to me that I found it listed in this article, because the plug in is recommended by WordPress in my admin screen as a hot plug in. I have done what everyone recommended, renaming the plug in folder, but that did not do anything to solve the problem. My site is up by the admin panel is wrong. I have also uninstalled all the files that are uploaded with W3. I would love to hear if anyone has any ideas as I am seriously up a creek without a paddle.
Any update on whether W3 total cache is compatible yet?
I want to upgrade but i must have that plugin, its set up with my CDN and memcached
I was having the same problem but got to the root of the problem. I had installed W3 Total Cache and had a blank page on wp-admin. I added the following lines in my .htaccess file:
php_value memory_limit 256M
php_value max_execution_time 6000000
Now the problem seems to have resolved and the admin page is opening perfectly fine.
[...] in case anything goes wrong during the update process. You don’t want to end up having a blank page after upgrading, do you? Backup and Restore your entire [...]
Usman!
Thank You very Much! Your explanation solve my problem! My Wp-Admin was broken, and now it´s all Ok!!
Hugs
Alex – from Brazil
I’m glad my post helped you, Roubas
It must have been due to too much spirit in mixing which did not properly blend in your taste that causes the hallucination. lol