I had two big problems when I upgraded to WordPress 2.5. One plugin had a fatal error, and I couldn’t upload new images in the “add media” popup window.

I was ready to revert to 2.3 until I found the solutions. Here they are:

The image upload solution was in the WordPress Support forum.

In a nutshell, if you’re getting the HTTP error, you’ll need to add this to your .htaccess file in your WordPress root directory:

<IfModule mod_security.c>
<Files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</Files>
</IfModule>

(Your WordPress root directory is the highest directory in your WordPress installation. It’s the folder that contains all the WordPress files and folders at your website. It has folders /wp-admin/, /wp-content/, and /wp-includes/. Don’t go into any of those folders. Add the code into the .htaccess file–which you’ll edit in any text editor or HTML editor [in code]–and then upload it via FTP.)

If that doesn’t work (or if you’re getting a different error message), see the WordPress forum, you can always reinstall 2.3.3 and your site should be back to normal.

I like everything else in 2.5 pretty well… I think.

The plugin that had a fatal error was Popularity Contest. The solution to this came from Blogvaria.

Go into your desktop copy of Popularity Contest. The folder probably says “popularity-contest” on it. Open that in any HTML editor or text editor. (I’m using 1st Page 2000, which keeps the line numbers in any file.)

Near the top, around line 59, it says this:

if (!isset($wpdb)) {
require(‘../../wp-blog-header.php’);
akpc_init();

That’s the section that you’re going to change, manually. Here’s what Blogvaria says to do:

Open popularity-contest.php and scroll down to line 59.

Replace

require(’../../wp-blog-header.php’);

with

require(’../wp-blog-header.php’);

IMPORTANT: Ordinarily, this kind of post will be in the password-protected section for people who’ve bought my book, Sites that Soar! This public post is to show you the kind of information I cheerfully share with my readers.