{"id":434,"date":"2024-06-05T13:03:01","date_gmt":"2024-06-05T17:03:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/?p=434"},"modified":"2024-06-05T13:03:01","modified_gmt":"2024-06-05T17:03:01","slug":"installing-wordpress-5-1-18-broke-updating-and-installing-new-plugins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/2024060513\/installing-wordpress-5-1-18-broke-updating-and-installing-new-plugins","title":{"rendered":"Installing WordPress 5.1.18 broke updating and installing new plugins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before adding new posts to my blog, I decided to upgrade WordPress on my server from 4.6.3 to 5.1.18.<\/p>\n

BIG MISTAKE!!<\/strong><\/p>\n

My server is running PHP 5.3.8, so I cannot<\/em> upgrade to 6.5.3. WordPress offered 5.1.18 as an alternative, but I had to manually install the update from the server’s command prompt because WordPress cannot do it internally. Not a problem, I am very<\/em> familiar with Linux command line.<\/p>\n

However, when I tried to update the plugins and themes, the connection type radiobutton was stuck on FTPS (SSL)<\/strong> – not a problem, since that’s the connection type I want to use. When I told it to proceed after entering my password, though, I got an error message stating<\/p>\n

Failed to connect to SSH2 Server fkeinternet.com:22<\/p>\n

WAIT!<\/strong> <\/em>I didn’t ask for an SSH2<\/strong> connection, and even if I wanted one, the radiobutton is stuck on FTPS<\/strong>! Why is WordPress trying to initiate an SSH2 connection when everything says it should NOT be doing that?<\/em><\/p>\n

I found I had exactly the same problem trying to update the installed themes.<\/p>\n

I set those problems aside because my objective here is to add some new posts to my blog.<\/em><\/p>\n

WRONG AGAIN!!<\/strong><\/p>\n

I found every new paragraph is a new “block” – not that I wanted blocks in the first place, but OK, paragraphs can be blocks. I got three paragraphs written, and decided I wanted to change the color of some of the text in the second one. I selected the text by dragging out the range with my mouse cursor. When I went to the Color Settings<\/strong> and picked from the Text Color<\/strong> options, the entire paragraph changed color!<\/em> This is NOT<\/strong> <\/em>what I wanted to do. I deselected the color option, and went to edit the paragraph as HTML. I wrapped the selected text in a <span color=”#cdcd77″><\/strong> directive, switched back to the visual editor – and there was no change. There was also no change when I previewed my post. Back in the editor window, I did something where an “invalid HTML” error appeared.<\/p>\n

I deleted the entire paragraph block and retyped it. I figured perhaps I could look at the code when the whole paragraph is colored to see how I should set up my <span><\/strong> directive. When I looked at the HTML after changing the color, I was horrified to see the <p><\/strong> directive bounding the paragraph (inside the HTML comment <!– wp:paragraph –> <\/strong>directive added by the Department of Redundancy Department) had been changed to<\/p>\n

<p class=”has-text-color has-luminous-vivid-amber-color”><\/strong><\/p>\n

What? Is <p color=”#cdcd77″><\/strong> really incomprehensible? (Further incendiary comments withheld…<\/em>)<\/p>\n

I turned to Google, trying to find ways to change the color of just a few words of text in a WordPress post. I found many references saying things like “select the text, use the controls in the toolbar” – but since the options aren’t present in the toolbar, that advice is totally useless.<\/p>\n

I then discovered this horrific editor had been introduced in the 5.0 release of WordPress, but it’s possible to get the previous functionality restored by installing the Classic Editor plugin. Great!<\/p>\n

but no, FOILED AGAIN!!<\/strong><\/p>\n

I went to the Add New<\/strong> option for the Plugins for my WordPress instance, and there was Classic Editor, right at the top of the list! Just click “Install Now” – and the dialog came up asking for the FTP credentials. This time when I hit the “Proceed” button, I didn’t even get an error message, the same dialog simply came back with the password field apparently filled in.<\/p>\n

I thought that perhaps there was a file permissions problem on the server, so I added group write to everything in and under the wp-contents<\/em> directory. That had no effect.<\/p>\n

Again I turned to Google, looking for a way to install the Classic Editor plugin from the Linux command line, since it seems WordPress is now incapable of doing any updates from its GUI. However, I haven’t found anything resembling instructions for a manual installation of Classic Editor.<\/p>\n

I guess I’m going to have to revert my WordPress installation to the state it was in before I wasted the day today by trying to do an update. I hope there weren’t any significant database changes, because I’d like to avoid having to reset the entire database system.<\/p>\n

I’m glad I did a backup before starting the upgrade process!<\/p>\n

This also doesn’t address the issue that Permalinks <\/strong>now ignore my Custom Format<\/strong> selection – an irritation at best.<\/p>\n

All I wanted to do was write a couple of new blog posts…<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

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Before adding new posts to my blog, I decided to upgrade WordPress on my server from 4.6.3 to 5.1.18. BIG MISTAKE!! My server is running PHP 5.3.8, so I cannot upgrade to 6.5.3. WordPress offered 5.1.18 as an alternative, but I had to manually install the update from the server’s command prompt because WordPress cannot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,25,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disturbing","category-really","category-web-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":435,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434\/revisions\/435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}