WordPress MU

Hi everybody,
I wonder why the new WP mu does not have the widget integration of WP 2.2 integrated. As the upgrade to WP 2.2 made many very usefull widgets useless and destroyed thousands of blogs, costing millions of working hours and $ for the community, I am afraid WP mu will be updated too and the new widget function will be integrated. This will mean that the users of WP mu will have the same problems the upgraders of WP have and in this case should stay away from installing mu until it will have the widgets integrated.(Anyway, the integrated text and rss widgets are much worse than e.g. the King widgets, which stopped working in WP 2.2.) At least WP 2.2 should have be programmed including the advantages of widgets we cannot use anymore...
Cheers,
Janfri

(As I see in my WP 2.2. dashboard, the last message from the developers is still "On behalf of the entire WordPress team, I’m proud and excited to announce the immediate availability of version 2.2 “Getz” for download. This version includes a number of new features, most notably Widgets integration, and over two hundred bug fixes."

It should read "This version includes a number of new features, most notably Widgets desintegration, and over two hundred new bugs." Why does nobody warn upgraders?

"I wonder why the new WP mu does not have the widget integration of WP 2.2 integrated."

Can't say when it was added to the 2.2 core, but since our wonderful developer Donncha has recently had a new bundle of joy, he's been on a little holiday while adjusting to the new family addition.

It may be in the svn for MU already, and to be honest I haven't looked lately.

But, at the time of the last full public package, the additional widget stuff may have not been included in the actual WP 2.2 svn at that point.

However, that being said, it may intentionally be left out of MU for a while as well, since most MU admins put a lot of faith in the widgets plugin.

Hard to say, and Donncha would really be the only one that can give any definitive answer.

If upgrades gone wrong are going to cause you a lot of hassle, it's a good idea to do it on a test blog first. Fix what needs to be fixed, and then put it in production.

@lunabyte: I agree with your supposition that it was left out intentionally and suggest the reason: First destroy the blogs of WP users and make widget developers adapt the widgets to the new version. Than integrate the new feature to MU so that the "important" users like Harvard University do not suffer the desaster...

@heyguy:Hey guy,
thanks for the suggestion. I am running mu as a test blog and want(ed) WP for my website, as it seemed to be stable. Now I am thinking of running mu with the widget plugin on my website instead of WP 2.2 with widget desintegration. It is not understandable that things which where perfectly working are changed. Where is the advantage of the widget integration if most of the existing working plugins cause errors now? I am sure that very many of us are not too gratefull for that new feature...

I think you need to look at the bigger picture. Everybody seems to like widgets, so why make everyone install a plugin when it could just be integrated, right? It's a step in the right direction.

Okay, so maybe the first run didn't go so well. So roll back and don't use it. Or do use it, and feed suggestions and bug fixes back to the developers.

That's what the "community" part is about.

I'll have to agree. There isn't anything wrong with running the 2.1 branch.

And I don't think this has anything with "Harvard", so please don't twist my words into something you wish to use as a harmful source for your (obvious) distaste with WordPress right now.

This is MU, and it isn't an issue here. Your issue is with WP, so I suggest discussing it there.

Agreed. You need to be discussing this over at wordpress.org instead of blowing off steam over here. I've done just under 1100 upgrades for my clients with only 7 issues and all of those have been because the users had modified their code and forgot to tell us. (We upgrade manually if they mess with the code else we run a script that autoupdates across servers.)

Not sure if Donncha plans on adding in the widget code to core MU. We do have some folks here who don't run it so not sure what he plans on doing. You may want to open up a ticket in the Mu trac if you want a definite answer. Gotta admit though that he's already going to have his hands full when he gets back with the tickets already in the queue.

Also you may want to check with the widget developers as most of them have already upgraded their code for the 2.2 release.

One final thing: This is a support forum, not a policy or discussion forum. If you have a legit question, please feel free to ask it. If you have a beef with the actions of the developers, please take it to the wp-hackers mailing list. That's the place for it. This is not.

Thank you for your understanding,
-drmike
Moderator