Since I was doing a upgrade I thought this message would go away shortly, however it did not.

Well I did a bit of research and found that the above error is because of a maintenance file that WordPress adds to the root directory whenever it is auto-upgrading.

Most of the time it deletes the maintenance file, however sometimes it may not be able to do that and users will see the above message when they visit your blog.

To fix this error you will need to login to your FTP server and search for a file called “.maintenance” without the quotes, this file should be in the root directory of your WordPress installation.

Once you find the file delete it from your FTP server. Once you do that your blog will return to normal, hope this solves your problem too.

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Here are the steps to downgrade WordPress 2.8 to WordPress 2.7.1, I assume that you have backups of your database with you, without the database backup do not downgrade.

Note: I am providing these instructions for your reference, I take no liability if something goes wrong with your downgrade.

Most of the problems happening in installs in WordPress 2.8 is because of incompatible plugins and themes, please make sure you switch to the default theme and disable all plugins to see if it solves your problem before you make a decision to downgrade.

The downgrade process may take about 30minutes to an hour, so be prepared to have some downtime on your blog.

Step 1: Backup your current database and store it in a safe location, if anything goes wrong you can fall back on it later, here are some instructions on backing up your database, here are some questions with relation to Backing up WordPress.

Step 2: Delete all WordPress 2.8 files, to do this login to your FTP server and delete all files in the WordPress install except for wp-content folder and the wp-config.php file, you may also want to leave out other folders that are not related to WordPress.

Step 3: Download the WordPress 2.7.1 files and extract them to your local drive, upload all the files excluding the wp-content to your FTP server.

Step 4: Delete all the database tables in the WordPress database. Please make sure you have backups of your database before you do that.

Step 5: Restore the database backup you have before you upgraded to WordPress 2.8, you can find instructions on restoring your Database.

Step 6: Make sure everything works again and nothing is broken.

That’s it, hopefully this helps users who are seeing problems with their upgrade to WordPress 2.8.

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The WordPress development blog updated with their IRC chat meeting where the target date for WordPress 2.8 was set as June 10th, this may in the end not turn out to be the final release date, so don’t keep your fingers crossed.

However this version of WordPress packs in several features including a theme browser and installer, much more customizations to the admin dashboard, a better widgets API among other things.

If you have not yet had the chance to take a look at WordPress 2.8 or its features, do take a look at a Hands-on Review of WordPress 2.8 I did on Weblog Tools Collection, it would better help you make a decision on whether or not you should upgrade to WordPress 2.8 whenever it comes out.

What do you think, will you upgrade to WordPress 2.8 when it comes out? Are the features interesting enough for you to upgrade, do let me know your thoughts.

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However I searched around for a better solution to it and came across a gem of a solution called Advanced Category Excluder, which allows users to exclude categories and more from appearing in your home page, archives, RSS feeds and more.

Using this plugin you can hide categories, pages, links, link categories and tags from appearing on several sections of the blog.

The category excluder allows you to hide categories from archives, home section, RSS posts, RSS comments, search results, pages, single posts and even block categories from appearing in search engine results by blocking access to search robots.

In addition to this, the plugin also provides users with several other advanced options, making it a must have tool for managing content in a better way with WordPress. If you are looking to block individual posts from appearing in feeds, you can take a look at our own offering Feed Pauser.

Download Advanced Category Excluder

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The list of tips and tricks include:

• Links to tips and tricks to learn what’s new in WordPress 2.7
• Handy instructions and tips to tricks to upgrade to WordPress 2.7.
• Advanced resources and tips and tricks for using WordPress 2.7.
• Know which plugins are compatible with WordPress 2.7

The tips include several things you should know, including some of the best features in WordPress 2.7, part of which we had covered in our WordPress 2.7 review, notes on making your themes compatible with WordPress 2.7 among other things.

So head out to Shankrila and read the Top WordPress 2.7 tips, hacks, plugins & resources.

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Here is a simple tutorial you can use to change your current theme to use the inbuilt threaded comments and paged comments feature in WordPress 2.7.

Step 1: Backup your comments.php file, so that if anything goes wrong you can easily revert back to the older version.

Step 2: Download this comments.php file and replace it with your theme’s current PHP file. You may want to modify and replace the code for displaying your comments form and styling the comments itself.

Step 3: Test if the comments are showing up properly, if they are not revert back to the original backed up copy of comments.php.

For more detailed instructions on making use of the latest comment features in WordPress 2.7 check out this handy WordPress 2.7 comments enhancement article by Otto.

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If you are unaware of the features available in WordPress 2.7, do take a look at our WP 2.7 hands-on review, that walks you through some of the best features available.

Sadly this is the last time many of you will be using WPAU to automatically upgrade your blog, so it is time to finally say Adios to WPAU, Rest in Peace.

Update: I was able to update my personal blog to WordPress 2.7 using WPAU, so there should be no issues there while doing the final upgrade

Download WordPress 2.7

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Should you upgrade to WordPress 2.7? Well we did a WordPress 2.7 hands-on review that tours some of the most exciting features in WordPress 2.7, take a look at it and decide for yourself.

The most notable features in WordPress 2.7 release include:

• Automatic Upgrade of WordPress (Which users could earlier do with our own plugin WPAU ).
• Reply To Comments from Admin Dashboard (Which again was possible with our own plugin Better Comments Manager).
• Improvised Dashboard.
• Keyboard Shortcuts for Comments.
• Comments API to manage comments remotely.
• Threaded Comments and Auto-Close of comments.
• Install and Search New Plugins without leaving Admin Dashboard.
• Enhanced Write Panel.

There are many more exciting features, which make this release possibly one of the best one till date. So are you excited about WordPress 2.7?

WPAU And Other Updates

As for WPAU it has served the community for quite a long time and people would still use it to upgrade to WordPress 2.7 , I have earlier officially retired WPAU development and with the release of WordPress 2.7 would want to finally say goodbye to it, this means that there will be no support for users who are using WordPress 2.7 and above, however I will continue supporting users using other versions which do not have inbuilt  support for automatically upgrading WordPress for a brief period.

I hope that WPAU has helped many of you and it has been a handy companion for all of you using WordPress as a blogging platform.

However the future is good as I have several plugins which are coded but not ready for release yet, and which I should be releasing in near future, so look forward to some more exciting plugins from me. On the other hand I am also working on releasing a new exclusive Techie Buzz theme which should be released sometime next week, so keep tuned as I am sure many of your will love it.

If you have any question or want to say any good or bad things about WPAU , please feel free to leave your comments, am looking forward to them.

Image Credit: Ayuda WordPress

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If you are still not aware of the changes in WordPress 2.7, you may want to read our hands-on review of WordPress 2.7. That said WordPress has added a new feature called “Showcase” on their website, that showcases blogs running on the WordPress platform.

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WordPress Showcase lists out blogs and provides details such as description, type of WordPress flavor being used by the blog, along with allowing users to rate the websites. Definitely a great way to get your blog noticed.

If you want to add your blog to the Showcase you can do it by filling out this simple form, the only criteria is that your blog should be powered by WordPress in any flavor that is provided by them, including a self-hosted WordPress.org blog, a blog host on WordPress.com, WordPress MU blogs or WordPress.com VIP blogs.

WordPress Showcase [via LiewCF]

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Here are my impressions on WordPress 2.7, remember this is just a beta version, so do not install it on your main blog yet.

Improvised Dashboard

The first thing I noticed after logging in was a improvised dashboard which was way much better than any earlier versions of WordPress.

The new dashboard has easy navigation links in the left hand side, which is a change from the regular top menu navigation the earlier versions had. The dashboard widgets have been rearranged and look pretty in WordPress 2.7.

(Click to enlarge)

The dashboard also includes Quick Press a easy way to write short posts from the dashboard without having to invoke the full write panel. This is definitely useful when you want to write quick announcement posts, and can be compared to the micro blogging service Tumblr.

The write panel can now be accessed through any page from the top menu, and you can easily add a new post or page without having to go to the manage menu first.

Show On Screen Options

WordPress 2.7 now has a easy configuration menu to allow users to only see items they want on any admin page. This can be easily controlled by clicking on the Screen Options link in the top of the page.

Once you click on the link, a menu will be shown where you can choose the items you want to display on the page, this can be controlled for every admin page, including the write page etc.

Enhanced Comments Management and Reply To Comments From Dashboard

WordPress 2.7 has a pretty good comments manager, and now you can edit the comments without having to leave the page, and also reply to them from the admin dashboard, this feature is similar to what I did with the Better Comments Manager plugin.

In addition to that you can also filter comments based on posts, there are also keyboard shortcuts using which you can approve, edit, delete the comments.

Automatic Upgrading of WordPress

WordPress 2.7 has a in-built function to automatically upgrade your version of WordPress, this feature is definitely a must have and I had tried to tackle this issue with the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin.

With the in-built upgrader you will have to backup the files and database yourself.

Threaded Comments and Auto Close of Comments

WordPress 2.7 now allows the ability to have threaded comments where users can reply to any other comment, in addition to that you can also automatically close the comments after a certain period has elapsed, this option is available under Settings –> Discussion.

You can also display comments in a paginated format, so that the page load time increases if there are a lot of comments on a post.

Install New Plugins From The Admin Panel

Installing plugins was always a pain with WordPress as you had to download the files to your local machine, unzip the files, open your FTP software and upload the files, before finally going to the admin panel to activate the plugins.

With WordPress 2.7 you can breathe some relief since can now search for the plugins in WordPress extend gallery and directly install them without having to download it to your local PC.

If you want to install a plugin that does not exist in WordPress extend you can upload the zipped archive from your local PC to be installed as a plugin.

Enhanced Write Panel

WordPress 2.7 has a enhanced write panel which loads much faster and is more cleaner than the earlier versions, you also have the option to create a sticky post which will always show on the home page by ticking the Stick to front page check box.

I use Windows Live Writer to post content to the blog, so cannot elaborate much about granular changes made in this section.

Summarizing

Overall WordPress 2.7 looks like a good upgrade and it should be available to users by end of this month after the initial beta bugs are reported and fixed.

What do you think of WordPress 2.7, let us know through your comments.

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