This is show 209 originating from www.schoolofpodcasting.com
The good news about WordPress is it is free, and it is being developed on a constant basis. You get new features like the ability to search for plugins, upgrade automatically, etc. The bad news is sometimes they add new features that don't agree with old plugins.
A plugin is like the air conditioning on a car. The car is basic. The air conditioning makes it better. However, an air conditioning unit from a 2009 model car may not work with the 2010 version of the car. Likewise, sometimes the plugins don't work when WordPress is upgraded. So what do you do?
Well, you will get an error that shows (yourwebsites/wp-content/plugins ……) has an (error) on line (line number) Unless you are a coder, you are out of luck. In the past, you had to use an FTP program to get into the “Back stage” area of your blog/podcast to delete/add files. I use www.coreftp.com
Now (one of the new features in WordPress) is the ability to delete a plugin from the Dashboard of WordPress. Under appearance, there is a “plugins” section. Find the plugin you are having an issue, deactivate it (if its activated) and then you can choose the “delete” option. It will ask you if you are sure, and when you confirm the deletion it is deleted. Now go back and check the “front” of your website and see if the front page comes back. If you have other bad plugins, they may now cause an error. If they do, delete them.
This is not a typical issue, but it does happen every now and then when the person who develops the plugin does not update it to work with the new version of WordPress.
The worst case of this for me happened when I used semiologic (a theme creation tool) which later turned into a tool you had to “renew” (to the tune of $300) every year. When I quit using it, the plugins eventually become obsolete and caused issues. If you are looking for a tool to create or customize a theme I recommend the Thesis Theme (although you need to be somewhat geeky) or artisteer.
This show was produced, recorded and published in 27 minutes.
