In Wordpress, when you access your admin screen, you will receive a very subtle message to notify you that a new version is available. I have been running Wordpress 2.3.3 for the longest time, putting off upgrading to 2.5. I finally succumbed to the subtle message that finally became annoying and upgraded to 2.5.

I wasn’t up and running on 2.5 for more than a few days when I received another subtle message to upgrade to version 2.6. Screw it, I said. I’m not wasting my time upgrading again, it will have to wait. Not that upgrading is all that painful, but I use Filezilla to FTP the updates to my blog server. If you’ve ever used Filezilla, it’s what I like to call "crap shoot software". It will either work, or you’ll crap out trying. When uploading multiple files to my blog server, Filezilla will sometimes decide to stop working and just close the app all together. This happens on the Mac version as well as Windows. It makes FTP’ing multiple files an exercise in futility. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a better FTP client that someone is willing to give me for free. I don’t mind paying for good software. I just don’t FTP enough to justify the spend.

Back to Wordpress…

Anyhow, I wanted to head over to FeedBurner to check on my RSS stats and noticed that for the past week or so, I have 0 (!) subscribers. Grant it, I don’t have a ton of subscribers but I have more than ZERO (note: if you’re not subscribed to this blog, what are you waiting for? Click here to add the feed to your favorite RSS reader). I couldn’t understand what was going on. FeedBurner would report an HTTP 500 error and my feed. The BIG DADDY of web application errors. If I browsed to the file that FeedBurner ends up re-directing to on my blog, I would get nothing. Notta. Zilch. Not even an empty XML tag.

Then I realized - Hey!, I just upgraded the Wordpress engine; and - Hey! Wordpress is letting me know that ANOTHER new version is available. Could this be the cause of my problems? So… I build up the gumption to fire up Filezilla and upload the new Wordress 2.6 engine to my server. Thankfully, Filezilla didn’t puke on me this time. I did have to do a directory-by-directory copy, but it worked. And now, I’m happy to say, my blog feed has returned from the dead.

I have to tell you. I’ve been having more and more problems with Wordpress of late. It might be time to switch AGAIN. Another exercise I’m not willing take on just yet.