Plug-in Hell
I am not sure what caused the problem. I am not even sure what was done to ‘fix’ it. I am just glad to be out of plug-in hell.
A couple of weeks ago the blog got updated to new wordpress software. Everything seemed to survive the upgrade except the image rotator.
Some time ago I decided to incorporate a header image rotator in my basic Kubrick theme. Something to spice up the bland theme and make it more interesting. It worked great.
As time went on I added a few other plug-ins that seemed to work and cause no problem.
The problems did not start until the wordpress upgrade.
Now, four weeks later, I finally got the image rotator working thanks to the intervention of a skillful hacker. Seems the CSS template was being overwritten by some thumbnail plug-in. Seems also that the WP-Cache plug-in was preventing HTML updates. Not sure which was the real correction or why those things did not seem to be issues under the old wordpress. I am just glad things are back to normal.
The lesson learned here is that if you don’t have time to fool with things that don’t really matter, then stick with an unmodified theme.
You use plug-ins at great risk. They are risky because they are not managed and are probably not even written by programmers. Any fool can write code that works but it takes someone with knowledge and programming skills to write code that works under all conditions. When you have a multitude of people all writing code the others are not aware of, you have a tower of bable situation.
The knowledgeable elite among us will say, ‘Well, you should look at the code in a plug-in before using it’. If I knew the code well enough to find problems, I would be writing my own and not have to use a plug-in.
So, you see, the elite recommendation is not just worthless but an affront to everyone who receives it. It is like telling people that the way to avoid an accident is to make sure they are not there when it happens.