If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

For sure, having things renewed, polished and updated should be a positive phenomena but not when it comes to upgrading into WordPress 2.6. You see, I know a couple of bloggers who suffered from seemingly a total disaster when they opted to upgrade their blogging platform into the 2.6 version of WordPress. Although WordPress support pages, documentations and all are all over the place so to speak (in fact it is already overflowing), a conscious user will probably immediately look for a fresher guide and not just a listing for new features and developer notes.

Some friends in Plurk are also having this dilemma whether they should upgrade to the latest version or not. And yes, I know somebody who was not even able to upgrade to WordPress 2.5, for whatever reason I did not bother to inquire.

Anyway, I passed through the gauntlet that is intertwined with the upgrading process and to tell you frankly, I did a horrendous logging of everything that is in full operation while at the version 2.5. I went on very carefully so as not to screw things. The database backup was massive that as if, tomorrow is the doomsday.

Now came the search for the support documentation. I was particularly looking for the new codes on how to exclude a page in the blog header’s navigation menu. I wrote a page explaining “RSS” and I can’t make it disappear from the header navigation menu except by making it private. But doing so will defeat the purpose because the page will not display when pointed as a link. I went to WordPress Codex page and found nothing but a list of new features for WordPress 2.6. Next thing was the documentation. The same result. I dived into the WordPress forums and found nothing but old threads pertaining to the older versions. Google also failed me.

Who saved the day? It was Simon Wheatley with his plugin “Exclude Pages“. Exactly what I was looking for. Now here is how my dashboard looks like when in page writing mode:

I know, I know.. I should have looked first in the WordPress plugin pages but I guess it would be the least option that you would take because plugins (most of them) are owned and created by third party individuals. The first thing you would look for upon buying a gadget is its user manual and not those of its add-ons.

Anyway, now I that am done with the upgrade and page exclusion from the navigation menu, I do hope WordPress will brush up its upgrade documentations for easier use of the system.

And yes, did you like those two artworks up there? I was switching windows while writing this post - following a photoshop tutorial while blogging.