Blogs for the Columbia Community
WordPress and all themes and plugins have been upgraded to current versions. In addition, the following new items have been installed.
If you were using WP-Table-Reloaded or qTranslate on your site, please be especially careful to test.
– November 11, 2016
We are planning to upgrade WordPress along with all themes and plugins on Friday morning 11 November from 8-10am. WordPress will be unavailable for periods of time during the upgrade process.
If your site was created before 8am on Tuesday 10/18, please check it on the already-upgraded WordPress staging server by going to your dashboard and clicking on the link in the message at the top. Send mail to [email protected] if you notice any issues. If your site is newer than this, it hasn’t been copied to the staging server and you won’t be able to check it in advance of the production upgrade.
If you have been using the plugin “WP-Table Reloaded” on your site, be aware that the plugin has been replaced by the newer “TablePress.” You should not need to make any changes to your site in order for your tables to function properly, but please check carefully. You can read more information about the new plugin here: https://tablepress.org/
Posted in Upgrades.
– October 18, 2016
All themes and plugins were upgraded to current versions on Friday 14 October 2016. If you detect any issues with your site, please email [email protected].
Posted in Upgrades.
– October 14, 2016
Update: The upgrade is complete as of 10am July 29.
We are planning to upgrade WordPress along with all themes and plugins on Friday morning 29 July from 8-10am. WordPress will be unavailable for periods of time during the upgrade process.
If your site was created before 8am on Friday 7/14, please check it on the already-upgraded WordPress staging server by going to your dashboard and clicking on the link in the message at the top. Send mail to [email protected] if you notice any issues. If your site is newer than this, it hasn’t been copied to the staging server and you won’t be able to check it in advance of the production upgrade.
If you use the plugin “Viper’s Video Quicktags” on your site, be aware that the plugin has been discontinued because WordPress now includes these functions natively. You can read here for more information: http://www.viper007bond.com/2016/07/04/vipers-video-quicktags-wordpress-plugin-discontinued/
Note: Although the migrator plugin installed without issue on our test and staging servers, it would not install on the production server. Anyone who was using the plugin Viper’s Video Quicktags may see issues. Although we are continuing to try to get the Viper’s Migrator to work, you may want to use WordPress’s native functions to re-embed your videos. Take a look here to see instructions: https://codex.wordpress.org/Embeds/
We’ve installed the new migration plugin, so your site should continue to work properly with no effort on your part, but it would be a good idea to check your site carefully.
Posted in Upgrades.
– July 14, 2016
WordPress suffered an outage from around 2pm on June 20 to around 1:45 on June 21. The outage revolved around the volume where the WordPress application and uploaded user files (images, PDFs, etc. NOT posts) are stored.
Although WordPress is available now, any images (or other files) uploaded since April 15 (actually, between April 15 and sometime on June 20) have been lost. You will see evidence of this on pages with missing images, and if you look at your Media Library you will see blank boxes instead of images.
To restore your images, you need to re-upload them, keeping the same names. They will then re-appear on your pages.
If you created a NEW site after April 15 and it appears to be missing, please contact [email protected] and we will help you re-create it.
If you did not upload any images or other files during this period, you don’t need to worry.
The source of the problem actually dates back to mid-April when we moved WordPress to new hardware. A mistake was made and the application was left using a temporary volume to store uploads — this is a standard procedure for these hardware migrations, but we normally switch back to the “real” volume before making the service available to users. In this case, a mistake was made and this switch-back didn’t occur. This caused no issues until this week, when the temporary volume was removed because nobody was supposed to have been using it.
We cannot apologize enough for this mistake, and want you to know that we’ve put safeguards in place to make sure this can’t happen again.
Posted in News.
– June 22, 2016
We will upgrade WordPress on Friday 3/25/2016 starting at 8am. It should take about 2 hours. During the upgrade, there will be times when your site may not be available, or may appear to be missing features.
Upgrades can affect the way some plugins and themes work. If your site was created before 3/4 we ask you to go to your dashboard and click the link in the notice at the top of the page to check the site on our staging server, where the upgrade has already been done.
Note that if you created your WordPress site on or after March 4, it may not be viewable on the staging server. If you have any questions or concerns, please email [email protected].
Posted in Upgrades.
– March 14, 2016
All themes and plugins were updated on January 22, 2016.
Posted in Upgrades.
– January 22, 2016
We will upgrade the WordPress software on Thursday 11/12/2015 starting at 8 am. It should take about 2 hours. During the upgrade, there will be times when your site may not be available, or may appear to be missing features.
Since upgrades can affect the way some plugins and themes work, we ask you to check your site on our staging server where the upgrade has already been done. You will find a link to your site on the staging server in the upgrade announcement on your blog’s admin area. Sites were copied to the staging server on October 23, so sites created after that date are not included. If your site uses any of the themes or plugins slated to be updated (see list below) you should be especially vigilant when testing.
The following plugins and themes will be upgraded along with WordPress:
– October 29, 2015
We will upgrade the WordPress software on Friday 8/7/2015 starting at 8 am. It should take about 2 hours. During the upgrade, there will be times when your site may not be available, or may appear to be missing features.
Since upgrades can affect the way some plugins and themes work, we ask you to check your site on our staging server where the upgrade has already been done. You will find a link to your site on the staging server in the upgrade announcement on your blog’s admin area. Sites were copied to the staging server on July 21, so sites created after that date are not included. If your site uses any of the themes or plugins slated to be updated (see list below) you should be especially vigilant when testing.
The following plugins and themes will be upgraded along with WordPress:
– July 22, 2015
WordPress has been upgraded to version 4.1.3. Many plugins and themes were also upgraded, so please test your site carefully if you are a site administrator. If you experience any issues, please contact us at [email protected].
– April 24, 2015
