Now that WP-United v0.8 is released, you will be wondering how to upgrade an existing v0.7x installation.

The procedure is simple. However, while you are upgrading, site visitors will receive errors, and certain pages will be inaccessible. It is therefore important that you bring your site offline during the upgrade process. The easiest way is probably to require a username and password using your .htaccess and an htpasswd file.

Once your site is offline, you are ready to upgrade. Open the file contrib/upgrading_from_v0.5.5_or_later/upgrade.xml in your browser, and read through the instructions before beginning.

Then follow the below steps:

• Delete your phpbb-root/wp-united directory from your server — it contains old files that need to be removed.
• Perform all the file copies and edits indicated in the upgrade.xml file — there are edits to three files, and you need to copy everything from root to your live site. If you renamed or moved blog.php, don’t forget to replace it with the new one for v0.8, and then edit it and provide the path back to phpBB, like you did before.
• Next, open up the file wp-united/options.php on your server,find the option WPU_DISABLE, and change the option from FALSE to TRUE. This will temporarily disable WP-United so you can complete the upgrade.
• Visit your phpBB Admin Control Panel, and purge the phpBB cache. This is important, without this the new WP-United hooks may not run.
• Visit the WP-United Setup Wizard, and run it all the way through.
• When completed, go back to your wp-united/options.php and change WPU_DISABLE from TRUE back to FALSE

Your upgrade should now be complete. Surf your site and play with the various new options. When satisfied, re-enable access to your site.

Remember that WP-United v0.8 contains many additions and changes. It is recommended that you test it on an offline copy of your forum first to ensure the upgrade will fit your needs before upgrading your live site.

Happy blogging!

Unless something goes terribly wrong, WP-United v0.8 will be released later today. (‘Today’ was supposed to be ‘yesterday’ but, due to ongoing testing, there are a few additional last-minute changes to cross-posting).

This afternoon I will briefly disable access to this site while we upgrade this site, and shortly thereafter I will post upgrade instructions here.

Apologies for the various bits of downtime over the last 24 hours — I have moved the VPS that holds WP-United.com, among various other sites, to a different continent. The move is now complete — if you are seeing this, then welcome to the new server!

If you notice any problems, please let me know. However, for all intents and purposes, things should be identical to the way they were before.

In the next couple of days, there will be a small amount of downtime as this site migrates to v0.8 of WP-United — consider it final testing just before I get to finally release it. In the meantime, any help in testing v0.8 and reporting bugs in the appropriate forum is, as always, much appreciated.

I had promised v0.8 by Christmas — and it really is, very nearly ready. I just need a few more days to complete the finishing touches and do some final testing. If you are waiting for it, I encourage you to download it from our SVN server at http://www.wp-united.com/svn and test it out.

Meanwhile, wp-united.com will be moving servers from tomorrow. This shouldn’t take more than a few hours, and I’ll post more details here once the move is in progress.

I was hoping to have v0.8 released before WordPress 2.9 — but as I want v0.8 to be the best release yet, there is still a little more work to do. It will be ready by Christmas, however.

If you would like to upgrade to WordPress 2.9 now, and are using WP-United v0.7.x, you will need to make a small edit to the file wp-united/wp-integration-class.php, as follows:

Find the line // or you could add your own here

And after it, on a new line, add:'wp_embed',.

Alternatively, hang tight for all the new features and bug fixes in v0.8 — watch this space!

If you are testing WP-United v0.8 (on a non-live webserver, of course), I have just checked in a large number of updates, that fix several show-stopper bugs.

Please update to the latest version by updating from http://www.wp-united.com/svn/trunk . However, please note that several changes have been made to the install.xml file — the number of code edits is significantly reduced.

For testing, I recommend testing on a virgin forum, but if you want to update your existing test v0.8 installation, please follow the directions in the latest contrib/../upgrade.xml file — in particular, the parts that get you to look for previous WP-United code edits and ask you to remove them.

People who don’t want to set their server on fire will still need to wait for the final release of v0.8 — as always, it should be soon. However, if you do have time to test and report bugs on a development server, it would be much appreciated.

If you are interested in testing or modifying WP-United code, you should check out the WP-United Build Environment. I have just updated it to use the latest phpBB and WordPress.

WP-United Build Environment

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Sorry for once again having “real work” taking over my life. WP-United is till very much alive, and I hope to be able to release v0.8 before Christmas.

I do, however, still need help with the forums — thank you to those who are already moderating and helping out with queries. Any more help is much appreciated.

I have a bit of holiday coming my way, and hope to be able to use it to ensure WP-United stays on track, and get around to providing some support services. In the meantime, do not hesitate to check out v0.8 from http://www.wp-united.com/svn and let me know how it goes.

John

As promised, WP-United v0.8 is now available for preview.

This is a beta release intended for final testing before release, and is not intended for production sites.

If all goes well, the final v0.8 (RC2) will be released within the week.

I must apologise for the delay in putting this up — as usual, life has been busy.

There are two new features in particular I would like feedback on: The new automatic template integration (CSS Magic & Template Voodoo), and the new “plugin workarounds” option.

To get hold of the new version, please check it out from our SVN repository, here .

It’s been a busy few weeks, but I have been able to do a lot of work on the exciting next release of WP-United.

The integration code has been reworked from the ground-up, with the aim of simplifying the code, while incorporating an exciting new automatic template integration system.

I will have a preview available later today or tomorrow for you to download and test out. In the meantime, I wanted to introduce the new template system — what it is, and how it works, along with some screenshots

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