After updating to WordPress 2.6 from 2.5 I noticed an error appeared at the top of some of my posts:

Warning: Compilation failed: characters with values > 255 are not yet supported in classes at offset 16 in /vhost/vhost6/s/c/o/scoopz.com/blog/wp-includes/shortcodes.php on line 213

This only appeared on 1 or 2 posts the rest remained unaffected. I realised that most of the posts affected were those which had galleries inserted using WordPress Media Manager and the [ gallery ] tag.

After some research it appears to be a known issue with older versions of PHP. My site is hosted with Easyspace who unfortunately won’t upgrade me from PHP Version 4.3.2 unless I pay extra for a new hosting plan.

Somebody pointed out that if you try adding a test post with new images and insert a gallery, the error doesn’t appear unless you add ALT tags to the images (Image Caption).

For now I’ve simply removed the gallery from the affected posts until I either get my PHP upgraded or the next update from WordPress.

UPDATE (20th August) – I’ve updated my web hosting so I’ve now gone from PHP4.3.2 to PHP5.1.6 and inserting a [ gallery ] still causes the same error at the top of my posts. I’ve noticed there is another update out for wordpress (2.6.1) so I’ll try updating to that and see if that fixes anything.

UPDATE (20th August) - Just finished updating to 2.6.1 and the problem has now disappeared, so if you are experiencing this issue I’d highly recommend upgrading to WordPress 2.6.1

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Filed under: Technology, error, gallery, php, wordpress