Dooodl misery!

Published by Ronny on September 24th, 2009 in Wordpress, plugins. 11 Comments Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Let me start this post with a big…

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I really screwed up yesterday. I updated the Dooodl plugin and commited it to SVN. After having done that I wanted to wait until the changes reflected on the Wordpress site (which sometimes takes a few minutes). However I had to go over to Ward for dinner, so I took my laptop…

When arrived there I checked the site back and saw the changes. I updated the plugin on my site immediately using the WP-plugin auto-update functionality. That’s when all hell broke loose…
I saw that all the doodle-images on my site were gone, but the userdata (in the database) remained. When checking the FTP I realized what happened… The images are saved inside the plugin folder in a folder called ‘doodls’. Once you let Wordpress update the plugin automatically it tells you it ‘removed the old version of the plugin‘, before it ‘upgraded the plugin succesfully‘. It actually removes everything in that directory. I did NOT know that! I expected the plugin to replace all the existing files with new files and add the missing files/folders. And that’s why everything saved by the plugin was was lost once updated…

In my case I immediately lost about 120 doodles you guys submitted. Lucky for me I took a backup only half an hour before running the upgrade . In the end I only lost 11 images. I hope I’m the only one who ran into this misery.

But now…
There’s a new version online (1.0.5) (1.0.6  featuring smaller brushes ;-) ) which will not have that issue anymore. But before running off and installing this version please take a look at this and please be absolutely sure to have a backup of your doodles before installing ANY other version of the plugin…

  1. Before updating, download the /wp-content/plugins/dooodl/doodls/ folder. This folder contains all doodles your users saved. If you don’t, you will lose all images your users saved.
  2. Create a folder in /wp-content/uploads/ and name it ‘doodls‘.
  3. Upload the images to this(/wp-content/uploads/doodls/) folder.
  4. Now you can upgrade the new version of the plugin.

Again: I’m terribly sorry about all this and I really hope you didn’t lose (too much) of your doodles. I already tested 1.0.6 and it’s working perfectly. If you safely copy/backup the folder with doodles (using the steps above) then you should be safe ;)

Having said all this…

sorry-cute-little-kitty

If you got any feedback or information on how Wordpress updates itself and plugins, do let me know. I really wouldn’t like running into this kind of trouble again…


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11 others felt like sharing their feelings about this. Feel free to do so as well.

Nelson @ 5:13 - September 24th, 2009

Hello there! I’m not planning to used the sidebar widget (yet). However, is is possible to add the plugin via a template tag? Thanks for your answer in advance!

Ronny @ 10:59 - September 24th, 2009

Hmz, I’ll look into it. I’ll keep you posted here ;) Subscribe to the comments ;)

Ronny @ 12:06 - September 24th, 2009

Hi Nelson: I just commited 1.0.8 to the wordpress servers. It will appear on the site shortly. That version is ‘theme-widget-unready’-friendly (omg what a term…). Call it using “< ? if (function_exists('Dooodl_widget')) Dooodl_widget(); ?> ;)

Nelson @ 14:17 - September 24th, 2009

I tried using but it showed an image with a bunch of SQL and PHP errors. I think I have the latest version of the plugin as it (WP ACP) hasn’t told me to update yet.

Ronny @ 16:18 - September 24th, 2009

send me an email with a screenshot of the errors and the version # installed (right now, the latest build is 1.0.8) to dooodl-at-nocreativity. i’ll look into it then :)

Nelson @ 17:30 - September 24th, 2009

Yeah, I just upgraded I had to clear my browser’s cache lol. The template tag is now working! You can view it at http://neodeviants.com/

By the way, I have found some HTML formating deficiencies. Also, the shadowbox.js plugin has not been updated in so long so the plugin is not working for me (shadowbox.js). I’ll be still using shadowbox through a different way xhtm/css “classes”.

Anyway, if you wish to contact me feel free to do so! Thanks a bunch for such a deviously delicious plugin!

Nelson @ 22:46 - September 24th, 2009

shadowbox.js seems to be working now. Good sh*t man!

Ronny @ 22:49 - September 24th, 2009

So everything is working like it should?

Nelson @ 11:23 - September 25th, 2009

Yes! Nice blog, bwt! It’s devious!

Ronny @ 13:20 - September 25th, 2009

Thx man! I’m glad to see you like it! Enjoy!

Cyber @ 21:04 - November 11th, 2009

Hey! Great plugin, however, I’m having that Doodl-not-saving issue. Looked around, it seems others have the problem too, doesn’t seem like it’s been solved though. :/ You’ll find the plugin here: http://cyberd.org/wp-content/plugins/dooodl/ . If you can figure out what the problem is that would be much appriciated. Looking forward to those rating/administration features! :)

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