UPDATE 09 Jan: Les Jenkins and Paul Burdick (of pMachine fame) dove into this problem like like a couple of mechanics on an interesting ignition problem, and – no surprise – fixed it right up. That’s the thing called ‘expertise’ but also a level of help and support that is impossible to ignore. This is one week I can’t afford to spend hours troubleshooting. I have a lot to learn about EE.
Turns out there was a little problem with the update script. it was foolproof, but not Decrepit fool proof! The script assumed certain things would be in place that I didn’t have in place.
And many thanks to Les and Paul for their help.
/grumpy
“You are only using version 1.1 of Expression Engine!”, says ‘Julie’ from pMachine hosting.
“Oh no!,” I said. Or maybe it was “So what?”
“The hosting agreement says the user is responsible for running the latest version and patches,” she said.
“I knew there was a reason I should have gone with WordPress,” I thought.
That was a couple months ago when she helped me with an addressing problem I had, and I hoped she’d forget. She didn’t. For some damn reason, it’s really important to them that I fix something that isn’t broken. She kept bugging me, with just a hint of ‘we’ll banish your site if you don’t comply.’
Oh, right, “security”. But wait! I have captchas turned on, commenters can only use limited HTML, trackbacks are off, and so are several other features that security bulletins said were a risk. My site wasn’t doing anything that posed any danger to their servers.
If it’s anything I have learned in 10 years of user support, it’s this: “Never upgrade.” Well not exactly never – if a really serious – and unpatchable – security risk exists in the version I’m using, I’ll change, but I really don’t care about the latest doodads. And to be perfectly blunt, Expression Engine’s documentation makes a lot of assumptions. But here we go.
Les Jenkins made a very kind offer of help, but I thought; “Hey, wouldn’t it be keen if I pulled it off without bugging him? Now that he has that new job and all.” So I tried it and here are my observations so far:
- The publishing screen is much better except that functions like logout, user guide, and cp home are hidden behind mouse-over mystery-meat navigation along the top of the form
- Captchas stopped working until I figured out that TT fonts had stopped working. Turn off TT fonts, and captchas came back. But now the letters are so small that they pose an even worse hazard to visually impaired visitors. Not that I’m aware of any, but still, I hope to figure out how to adjust the image size.
- Worst of all, though the ‘upgrade wizard’ said I successfully upgraded to version 1.4, the system says I’m still using version 1.1. I hate to bug Les with such trivia but if I can’t figure it out in the next day or two, I may have to.
Cool your jets, ‘Julie’; I’m workin’ on it…