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Home » The Famous Blog » Upgrading Thesis Theme Blog To WordPress 3.1 Safely

Upgrading Thesis Theme Blog To WordPress 3.1 Safely

February 24, 2011 - Last Modified: February 14, 2013 by Hesham Zebida 1,822

WordPress 3.1

WordPress 3.1 has been released today, I was really exciting to upgrade, but I haven’t forgot the rule number one which is backup database and code first before upgrading to a new WordPress release. Anyways, I’ve done one click upgrade to FamousBloggers, and everything seems to be working, so this is a confirmation from me to all Thesis Theme users, if you would like to upgrade, do it, it’s safe to upgrade to WordPress 3.1. Just be a ware, I don’t know what’s on your blog, so you may have some problems or break your blog after upgrade, so never forget the rule number one!

The new WordPress Admin Bar

The first thing you will notice after upgrading to WordPress 3.1 is the new admin bar that will show on your blog. However, you blog visitors are not going to see it, it will show only for registered users while they are logged in to their accounts.

I was waiting for this because it’s a great addition to multi-authors blogs, so now it’s more clear how to submit a new post! Trust me, I have got 10s of bloggers asking me how to submit a new blog post, they couldn’t find the submit new post button inside the WordPress dashboard, it’s funny, but it’s true!

I’ve done some testing earlier today to check how the admin bar will look like for different types of registered users, and here I only care for the admin, contributor and subscriber WordPress user types, so here is how it will look for a user that has just subscribed or registered to the blog:

Subscriber - Admin bar WordPress 3.1
Subscriber - Admin bar WordPress 3.1

You can see that users with subscriber level has nothing much in the admin bar, although this it’s very useful for them to get a fast access to edit profile pages, dashboard, or simply logout from the site, and they also can get the shortlink for the page or post they are browsing.

Now, it’s Contributors turn, if you set a user level to a contributor, this use will have a new links in the admin bar:

contributor admin bar WordPress 3.1
Contributor admin bar WordPress 3.1

Contributors will be able to add new posts from the admin bar, and also go directly to the comments in dashboard! Mmmm.. I don’t like the last part that much, so I am going to find a way to remove comment link from the admin bar!

It’s completely different when it comes to an admin account, some of the plugin will have a nice access to the admin bar, it will display a quick link or information on the bar, some other plugins will not show anything if they are not coded to do so!

Admin bar WordPress 3.1
Admin bar WordPress 3.1

How to remove the admin bar?

Maybe you don’t like it! Maybe you hate it! This is for you! If you would like to remove the bar from your blog add this filter to your custom functions file:

add_filter( 'show_admin_bar', '__return_false' );

Or, even easier that that is to install the disable admin bar plugin.

But in some cases we would like to keep the bar, but show it only when a particular event happen, or for only a few user levels (Example: who have the rights manage_options). Here is how:


function fb_show_admin_bar() {
if ( current_user_can( 'manage_options' ) )
return TRUE;
else
return FALSE;
}
add_filter( 'show_admin_bar', 'fb_show_admin_bar' );

Also, another thing that you might want to control is to remove the comments link from the WordPress admin bar! This is something I’ve done on FamousBloggers as I see it’s not a very good thing to show to all registered users! Her is the code (You can tweak this code to show comments only for blog admin or editors):


function nlk_admin_bar_render() {
global $wp_admin_bar;
// we can remove a menu item, like the COMMENTS link, just by knowing the right $id
$wp_admin_bar->remove_menu('comments');
// we can add a submenu item too
$wp_admin_bar->add_menu( array(
'parent' => 'new-content',
'id' => 'new_media',
'title' => __('Media'),
'href' => admin_url( 'media-new.php')
) );
}
// and we hook our function via
add_action( 'wp_before_admin_bar_render', 'nlk_admin_bar_render' );

Alright, but what if a user wants to disable the admin bar on his own account? Simple.. visit your profile page and help your self!

Disable admin bar in user profile
Disable admin bar in user profile

Post Formates

Another cool feature added to WP 3.1 which basically allows you to format your post layout in several ways. This new feature will not work with Thesis Themes and some other WordPress themes, it requires some customizations, basically you need to tell your theme about it! I’ve found a good resource that might get your interest, I’ve included it in the resources links below!

And, here are the sources of these codes for more information:

– Control when to display WordPress admin bar
– How to disable the WordPress Admin Bar
– Disable/enable the Admin Bar for specific users
– REmove comments link from WordPress admin bar
– WordPress 3.1 Post Formats Reference

Awesome! Let’s see what else WordPress 3.1 have for us!

Easy and Fast Internal Linking

Tired of trying to find related article to internal linking to them while writing your new blog post?

No problem, WordPress 3.1 has solved this issue completely. Try it! Click on add link button in your post editor and see how the new add link popup looks like:

New WordPress 3.1 add link window
New WordPress 3.1 add link window

Hit the “or link to existing content” and start searching! It’s super awesome!

There is actually a lot of stuff to check in WordPress 3.1, I can’t mention it here in a single blog post, but I am sure that a lot of people will start blogging about all it’s awesome new features, so do a search and you will find more awesome stuff!

Enjoy Blogging with WordPress 3.1

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Filed Under: Thesis Theme, Wordpress

About Hesham Zebida

Follow @hishaman

I create websites with WordPress, and I develop Schema Plugins to help SEOs. I am a social network lover. I am also the night creature who works hard to keep this project up. Owner and founder of the Famous Blog.

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{ 72 Responses }

  1. Selina says:
    Hesham, This is an awesome post. I will play around with the tips that you gave for 3.1. One thing I learned the hard way and I would make rule #1 is that you should do a Google search (or another SE if you don't like Google) and find out what kind of problems other people may be experiencing with the new update. It seems always best to wait a week until they get the bugs worked out. Do this before you even make the effort to backup and start planning, no? Selina
  2. Prasenjit says:
    The interlinking feature is a great addition to WP 3.1 onwards. It really helps a lot in finding related links quickly.
  3. SenseiMattKlein says:
    Am using Thesis theme, but like some of the others here, have decided to wait until issues have been resolved. Have noticed on the forums and blogs that there are some issues with this upgrade. I will wait at least another month. Like your article, Hesham.
  4. Gustavo says:
    I'm still hesitant if I should upgrade or not. I have so many plugins, that now I don't even know what each do. I'm afraid that my site will mess up when upgrading to the new version of wordpress. I probably will upgrade when I have a lot of time in case the upgrade process goes terribly wrong.
  5. Bryan says:
    Hesham, Wordpress 3.1 rocks. At first I was like hmm, is this going to be stable? But I had a bit of reading before I changed to this release. I really like the new interface. And the admin/contributor bar on top is really useful. Love the internal linking features too. Makes internal linking so much easier.
  6. Vee Sweeney says:
    Maybe I missed it scrolling the code but commenting out the code would probably also work and then if you ever wanted to make it appear again, all a person would need to do is remove the backslashes. Personally, I like leaving the code alone and just hiding things as long as as it's not a lot of stuff. I also prefer to easily be able to go back in and make things show up again if I have the need for it again in the future.
    • Hesham says:
      mmm.. I am using a theme framework, which is Thesis Theme! I don't touch the core, so I don't have to hide the code or stop it from processing or using a CSS trick! The code above has nothing to do with editing WP code files at all!
  7. Shiva says:
    Wordpress 3.1 certainly has brought some great new features. The best of which is the admin bar and the internal searching function. I did not know that the Comment option in the bar would show for all registered user, that is something I must disable using the code that you have give. Thanks for that Hesham. Also I did not know anything about the posts format, that is something new and will have to read more about it.
  8. Anne Sales says:
    This is awesome! I didn't know that admin bar was part of the 3.1. I just thought it had been there all this time. I've just launched my new site, you see? That's why I didn't know it wasn't there before. Thanks for the added tips.
  9. Hung Hong says:
    I love the internal link feature. Before, i need to search for related information from blog and post manually
  10. Juliemarg says:
    Thanks so much for the Thesis help. I reallylove the multi-author set up. On my travel blog, I've had 60 or so guest authors, and I've been wanting a method to just authorize them and let them do their thing.
    • Hesham says:
      mmm.. a good way to go is using the Role Manager plugin, it will give you more power while managing your members!
  11. Darren Scott Monroe says:
    Hey great post man but here is my question....do you ever have any particular plugins you anticipate having issue with the upgrade? How do you handle those? I mean the ones that consistently have issues upgrading with the changes immediately. Because once you marry wordpress as a developer you certainly are married to the upgrades....thats if you want to conitue to get free traffic and brand yourself :)
    • Hesham says:
      I am not sure as I actually removed a few plugins right after upgrading! Also, I notice that Ninja Affiliate plugin has some issues with updating posts, maybe my version of the plugin is old, so still checking this issue! lol, the good thing is the one click upgrade or then it will be ruff to upgrade 10s of blogs every couple of months!
      • Darren Scott Monroe says:
        LOL I hear you I am still having issues with one host still with the upgrading of plugins and the themes.
  12. Dennis Edell says:
    Is all of this just for Thesis?
    • Hesham says:
      No, the codes above will work on any theme! Usually themes has a file for functions, functions.php or custom_functions.php, it's where you can add these codes!
  13. Trish says:
    I just upgraded to 3.1 on a client site and am having major formatting issues. Not sure if it is related to Thesis or something else. But, when I try to use H2 in the visual editor - it applies it to the whole page, rather than to the highlighted text. Also, all formatting - centering, bold, etc... is discarded every time I switch between the visual editor and html editor - and when I save my draft. Any ideas on why this may be? (By the way - this site is very, very basic, so can only imagine what a mess it would make with my more complicated sites). Very, very frustrating. Will definitely hold off on updating all my other sites until I figure out what is causing this. Thanks in advance for any insight you can add to this...
    • Hesham says:
      Oh! I've tested my editor once again, everything is working normal! What about disabling plugins and test again? then enable them one by one and check your editor!
      • Trish says:
        Thanks for the suggestion - I will keep that in mind. I had copied/pasted the copy I was working on from a text file, (but it had been originally created in a Word doc), so I deleted everything and re-typed it directly into the visual editor. That seemed to do the trick, but I haven't had a chance to really test much further than that. (But, I did get a chance to use the new internal linking option and LOVE it!). :)
        • Hesham says:
          Yes! I was thinking of that! You can try to use the "Paste from Word" button in the editor! P.S. I really don't recommend copy and paste, I prefer writing directly to the WordPress editor! Great, have fun!
  14. Mani Viswanathan says:
    The addition of Admin bar is a nice move by wp. But then they need to focus on the load it creates once it's active.
    • Hesham says:
      Mmm... it's not that much load!.. don't know!
      • Mani Viswanathan says:
        I'm not talking about the size. After I enabled the admin bat, the scrolling on a Single post page becomes a bit Sluggish.
        • Hesham says:
          Oh! I got it!
  15. Bilal Ahmad says:
    Hmm thank you hesham for letting us know that things are fine with the new version. I am going to upgrade to the new version and of course backup is important. Every one should backup their blog before upgrading to a new version.
    • Hesham says:
      Great! Good luck!
  16. Kevin Martineau says:
    Thanks for all the helpful information Hesham! Ihaven't upgraded yet but I will probably do it tomorrow. I am looking forward to all the new changes.
    • Hesham says:
      Good luck Kevin, and thanks for stopping by!
  17. Chadrack says:
    Hesham, this indeed an insightful post on this latest upgrade. I actually upgraded a few of my blogs yesterday but I'm surprised that with the upgrade nothing showed up on my main blog. The other blogs which I upgraded worked fine but nothing seems to work on my main blog. I'm thinking it's the theme but I hope to look into that in the next few days. I really love that part about removing the admin link if not needed, though for me I think it could be really helpful if you just want to do some quick things.
    • Hesham says:
      Nothing show? you mean the admin bar? mmm.. weired! It should actually work on all blogs as I think it has nothing to do with the theme, so if you are logged in you should see it! Yes, I agree.. The admin bar could be very useful for some bloggers!
  18. Sandeep says:
    Internal linking seems to be a cool thing wordpress has done. If this functionality works well, i think we could get rid of the Insights plugin on our blogs. I would want to do an upgrade on the weekend and do a proper backup before anything... as you mentioned rule no.1 Wordpress seems to have done a good job with this upgrade
    • Hesham says:
      I've tried the internal linking feature and it's working great, and I feel the search is better than WordPress blog search itself some how! Good luck with the upgrade, it shouldn't take too much time, a few click to backup and then one click upgrade :)
  19. Rakesh Kumar says:
    Hey Hesham, should i check it out first on local host? Or i update my blog direct from Wordpress panel. Suggest me.
    • Hesham says:
      Testing on local host in my opinion is not a very good idea! The best way is to create a copy of your site on your web server somewhere and block search engines from indexing it. You can then do all your tests on that copy
  20. Fran Aslam From Onlinewriter says:
    Hi Hesham Thanks for the heads up for the upgrade. I just read you post and so much activity going on here. I think my site will not need it yet. I will take a look when I go back. Thanks for a helpful post for all. Fran A
    • Hesham says:
      Hi Fran, upgrading is recommended mostly for security!
  21. Tia says:
    I love these changes. I cannot wait to upgrade now! :) It makes multi-author blogging and internal linking so much easier. Yay!
    • Hesham says:
      Upgrades gives some action to the blogosphere :)
  22. John Soares says:
    Hesham, thanks for testing 3.1 with your Thesis theme. I have dozen or so sites that all use Thesis. I'll likely upgrade the least important ones first to make sure all goes well, and then I'll do the biggies.
    • Hesham says:
      That a good point John! I've done the same! The good thing is the one click upgrade, I like it!
  23. Mohammed Fouzan says:
    Oh!! I didn't done anything before upgrading to wordpress 3.1 . Will there be any issue with this stuff? I am totally new to this!! Please help me
    • Hesham says:
      I don't think you will have any issues with the new release!
  24. John Paul says:
    Nice walk thru my friend. Now I need to upgrade. :)
    • Hesham says:
      Good luck John, enjoy WP 3.1 :)
  25. Peru Tour says:
    Hi, thanks for the information. Usually I do not immediately update the latest version of WordPress. I always leave some time for me to proceed with the upgrade. It is also necessary to back up your database and files before upgrading. Best Regards.
    • Hesham says:
      Waiting for some time is not a bad thing!
  26. TJ McDowell says:
    I always get freaked out upgrading Wordpress. I guess it's a good idea, but I always worry that a plugin will no longer work or something will go wrong.
    • Hesham says:
      The most important thing in upgrades is it makes your blog more secured! Upgrading on a test site is a good idea!
  27. Robert Dempsey says:
    The updated internal linking is completely bad ass and makes it so much faster to link to additional content. Looks like one more plugin I can remove.
    • Hesham says:
      Yes Robert, I like the internal linking a lot! One plugin is dead!
  28. DiTesco says:
    Hi Hesham. Installed the upgrade yesterday, although I did the rule number one first before anything else. I am always afraid that something could happen so that was that. You are right, WP 3.1 is awesome and I am still playing around with. The new linking structure is cool and I was using "insights" before, so that's one less plugin I need. Thanks for the heads up and I'm sure that there are other "discoveries" to be made, so I'm here on the look out.
    • Hesham says:
      Great DiTesco, I've done an upgrade to my test site first, then did a backup before upgrading FB for the same reason! I can not have problems on the blog while it's in production! Enjoy your WP 3.1 my friend :)
  29. Rob says:
    Argh, I forgot the golden rule and upgraded one of my sites today without doing a backup, only to find that some of the themes functionality has been lost :( Also some weird stuff like I can't see exceprts in the edit post page anymore ?!
    • Hesham says:
      Sorry for that! mmm... maybe you can show the post excerpts again by checking the "screen options"on the top right in your edit post?! (not sure!) I see you are using WooThemes, Anyways... you shouldn't forget the rule number one!
  30. Neil says:
    Hi Hesham, I've been following you since I started blogging on January 1st 2011, I wonder if you could help me out. Yesterday I updated to WordPress 3.1, but today I notice that my homepage is no longer excluding certain categories from showing the excerpts. I still have the followiing in the custom_functions.ph file (ID of category I want to exclude is "4", the "News" category) is_home) { $query->set('cat', '-4'); } return $query; } add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'exclude_category'); add_action('thesis_hook_footer', 'custom_footer'); function custom_footer() { Can you suggest a solution to this? Has anyone else cme across this? I hope you can help.
    • Hesham says:
      I am not sure! I've done a search, and I found this code which seems to be working for some people, but I've tried it by myself now on the blog with no success! function exclude_category($query) { if ( $query->is_home ) { $query->set('cat', '-3'); } return $query; } add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'exclude_category'); I am sorry, I can not help with that!
      • Neil says:
        Hi there, Thanks for the tip, but this code version doesn't work either. Could this be a loss of functionality due to 3.1 upgrade?
        • Hesham says:
          Yes, I know it's not working, I've said that in my comment! I have no idea if upgrading to WP 3.1 is the cause, I also don't know how this can be solved, really! Try to post in WordPress.org support forum, maybe someone will give you an answer!
          • Neil says:
            Update: Apparently the issue is known: http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/16622 . Hopefully a fix will appear in 3.1.1 or something. Until then I just hid all the posts in the category I wanted to exclude from the homepage. Thanks for your responses though.
  31. Jan Husdal says:
    I upgraded yesterday and it seems to work fine on my blog. I'm not sure I like the admin bar, though. In fact, I find it rather annoying. The "Link to related content"-thing is interesting, since it does save me trouble of finding the URL for the related posts and it may suggest posts that I didn't think of before.
    • Hesham says:
      Hi Jan, Yes, I agree with you that the admin bar is annoying at some level, but for me it will actually save me some clicks as I spend a lot of time on the blog! The internal linking is the big hit for me as it will really save me a lot of time, I use the Google search box on the header of the blog so get accurate results while looking for posts to link to, so now I don't need to do this anymore! Thanks for sharing your opinion and experience with us!
  32. Dana says:
    Too bad that my current theme does not support this new WordPress version yet. I hope Theme Junkie will roll out their update soon so I can enjoy this new feature.
    • Hesham says:
      Dana, I think most of the features will work on any theme, there is only a few things will not work unless you theme support it like the post layout features!
  33. Rohan says:
    It seems like Wordpress has taken one step further to make the framework SEO friendly with the internal linking option and i am sure they have made some security tweaks as well :)
    • Hesham says:
      Finally they became believers :) I hope they will include more SEO for posts in coming releases!
      • Rohan says:
        I am dying to make the upgrade but i changed the Host DNS last night and i guess i should wait for the 72 hours grace period to let the site settle down and be served from the new IP address otherwise i wont know where it is served from and where the upgrade actually logged the new files. Seems like it is a 4 day wait for me to find out the changes . I would love to see keyword density option as an inbuilt feature in WP without the need of any external plugin , that will take it an extra notch upwards !
        • Hesham says:
          Great! don't rush things, soon you will be able to upgrade your blog! Good luck! And yes.. It will be great if they can add this features, I agree!

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