WordPress 3.0 & WP Stats
First, have you ever noticed how almost all the blogs that are categorized as technology also are almost always categorized frustrations? And remind me again why I chose computer science as my preferred field of study way back when? That aside, in case you are living under a rock, WordPress 3.0 came out this past week (Thursday mid-evening if I recall correctly). I have had it up and running here on Mephistos since shortly after the release without complaint in general. But…
You knew there was going to be a but, didn’t you? 
To begin let me say I have only played around a little bit with the major new features of the new version and most of that was back in the beta testing and release candidates. As I said a the time, custom menus are going to be pretty awesome and if you are running a site with multiple blogs (multi-user with separate sandboxes so to speak) you will love the coming together of the two platforms.
In addition to those, I have to say I am pleased with the minor arrangements that were made on the admin screens. Putting a few things at ‘hands reach’ really is an improvement, especially things like New Post pretty much being always right there at the top of the screen and the handy way Updates is now not only at the top, but additionally will update all out dated plug-ins if you so allow. I have also read a few places that claim the code is tighter and optimized (remember, I have always said, “Tight is good,” and that is certainly applicable here). This, so the claims go, results in a faster site for visitors and admins alike. Even Matt alluded to this in his announcement of the upgrade going live. I have no real measure, but it does seem somewhat faster.
One minor thing I have seen occur and I suppose I should open a problem ticket. I have customized my dashboard arrangement on all my blogs. Specifically I have dropped the WordPress Blog and Development News and have moved the Stats window to that top right hand position. Those things dropped stayed gone, but my arrangement was lost in the upgrade. Further, and here I am being picky beyond cause, the stats graphic cuts off the bottom of the drop down graphic from New Post.
One bigger issue is the WordPress: Stats plug-in problem I have encountered. First, to be clear, this can only be laid at the feet of WP 3.0 very indirectly. Way back when, I wanted to test the beta and later most especially the release candidates. I downloaded and installed into a blank domain I had sitting around. Then, since I wanted some data, I pulled a copy of the database from Mephistos, made a copy and pointed the new beta version on the separate domain. Somehow the stats plug-in (which has a tie in back to WordPress.com from the API Key that is required) did not see it as a separate blog and instead renamed my mephistos.com historic stats to the test.ray-cornish.com and changed the URL pointers as well. The mess up was such that the data for mephistos was under test.ray-cornish.com and apparently whenever either site was visited the count was updated and all relevant data stored.
After I was done with the testing I blew it away still not realizing the stats stuff was a mess. I did notice that today, after long missing it. However, after about an hour searching the forums for a solution and clearing seeing no easy way to reset it even in the WordPress.com settings page, I removed and re-installed the plug-in. This of course clears up all the mis-named elements, but it does not pull my historical stats into Mephistos.
So here I sit, grumbling most loudly, with an almost three old blog that statistically looks to be brand new as of a few hours ago. Granted, I can still go look at the other listing on WordPress.com to see the numbers and such, but that is such a pain I will likely never do such. Sure, I am not so interesting in the numbers (thought that is nice) but I like to see trends in where incoming links are hitting my site in a quick easy glance.
