Upgrading WordPress Breaks All My Links!

Recently, I wrote about moving a wordpress blog from one domain to another. Whilst transferring my girlfriends blog to another domain I noticed her blog was out of date. So I decided to update to wordpress 3.1 before I moved it. Bad choice, a simple rule to making changes in programming is this, “Make one change at a time and test after each change.” This rule of thumb helps establish a line of credibility and allows the programmer to know what change broke the code. In this case, not only did I transfer to a new domain, I also updated wordpress and had no way of knowing which change broke my website.

I went on a bit of a tangent, but basically when I finished the transfer none of the links on my girlfriend’s site worked. I couldn’t figure it out and spent close to 8 hours today troubleshooting her site. After running a simulation of transferring an older version of wordpress I realized the problem was caused by updating to wordpress 3.1.

This led me to investigate if anyone else had similar problems. It turns out there are a whole slew of problems associated with wordpress 3.1 and permalinks. Here are some common fixes:

1. Refresh the wordpress permalinks. Simply navigate to “permalinks” under “Settings” and click the save button. Make sure WordPress is updating your .htaccess file properly.
2. Make sure the problem links aren’t hard coded into the template you’re updating.
3. (This fix solved my problem) Update all your plugins! I had a plugin called Simple Tags installed on the site and that was causing the .htaccess to act a bit funky. If you upgrade, make sure all your plugins are up to date, if there is no update for them, make sure you individually test each plugin by deactivating it.

That’s if for now, just remember to update all your shit before you start hardcore troubleshooting!