When plugins and WordPress collide: oh, the horror!

Monday, January 14th, 2008

Apologies for my online absence over the past several days: I’ve effectively been locked out, unable to access the admin tools to write anything. Every single time I’ve upgraded my installation of WordPress over the past six months I’ve found myself having to deal with one or more plugins apparently, in the first instance, causing problems. I say ‘apparently’ for a reason: read on!

Sadly, it’s not often the case that the plugins stop working—that would make things a lot easier when it comes to identifying what’s gone wrong—but instead the usual problem is that the administrative menus slow down to such an extent that the majority of functions become unusable. The question is, can we always assume the plugins are to blame? Indeed, is it at all fair to blame the plugins or WordPress itself?

I could, but won’t, advise anyone currently running the beta of the Yahoo! Shortcuts plugin to remove it completely from their server if, and only if, they encounter chronic slowdowns of their WP blogs; but then, it might not be to blame for your slowdowns, it might only be related to other people’s slowdowns. So I find myself unable to advise with confidence; I can only suggest this as one possible cause, not a definitive answer. This particular plugin also wiped the content from a few of my entries last week.

I did a quick search online and found others blaming the plugin when encountering the same problems—slow admin, lost entries—but I discovered that yes, while this site was back up to speed when the plugin was removed, I was able to remove a different plugin, reinstate the Yahoo! Shortcuts plugin, and all was well. Confused? So was I, and still am.

Face it, and embrace it: this is technology, pure maybe but not even a little bit simple.

It’s easy to blame the plugin (or plugins, plural) but the problems began with the last WP security upgrade, 2.3.2; it’s more a case of plugin developers having to play follow-my-leader with the WP developers working on the core blogging engine. Every time a new version of WP comes out, the plugin developers must be crossing their fingers and praying it doesn’t trash their own hard work and in so doing bring them a slew of negative feedback from people who fail to recognise they were getting something for nothing (usually) in the first place.

People often blame the plugins when things go wrong, when, in fact, problems are inherent to the modular system we know as WordPress. It has great strengths, being flexible and adaptable, but those same strengths can, at times, be a real weakness. This is just the way it is. I don’t see any way of getting round this, other than to forsake the usage of any and all plugins and that would be akin to living in a house made of bare plaster and wood without any furniture in it.

Of course, the Yahoo! Shortcuts plugin is currently in beta and you might think, well, it’s going to go wrong, isn’t it? But WordPress is effectively in perpetual beta itself, constantly evolving and changing.

I mentioned the removal of another plugin, resulting in my ability to restore the first. That would be the Popularity Contest plugin—not a beta but instead long-established, highly-rated, and widely-used. The same developer is involved in making both the Popularity Contest and Yahoo! Shortcuts plugins.

Blame the developer? No. Blame the WordPress developers? Er, no. Blame it on the boogie? Only if you don’t like dancing.

So what am I saying? Accept that problems go with the territory when using the world’s best blogging software. But that doesn’t mean you can’t cuss and moan when things go wrong. Just don’t make it personal. But have the past few days of trying to find out what was wrong been frustrating? Hell, yes.

categories: all wired up