Assuming that you have not written any plugins for Simple:Press – and this change was made about 3 or 4 versions ago – then I imagine that while you have updated the core Simple:Press itself – you haver NOT updated any or all of the Simple:Press plugins that you are using. And of this is the case then doing so will bring everything up to date as it needs to be.

Assuming that you have not written any plugins for Simple:Press
I haven’t.

– and this change was made about 3 or 4 versions ago
The error message began to appear after I upgraded WordPress to 3.8 a couple of days ago. Co-incidence?

– then I imagine that while you have updated the core Simple:Press itself – you haver NOT updated any or all of the Simple:Press plugins that you are using.

I installed Simple:Press in February 2013, and have upgraded a couple of times (now at version: 5.3.4 / Build: 10781).

One of the plugins triggering the warning messages is ‘Watches’ (Version 1.2, dated: 26th February, 2013) – which, from your message, I have gone and found is now at version 1.3.3

My expectations (wrongly) were that Simple:Press Administration would inform me when a plugin had been updated; the plugin page shows no ‘update’ or ‘this plugin has been updated’ on any of the Plugins/Available Plugins.

If that feature isn’t available – I’d like to ask for it now

Meanwhile – I finding that I cannot upgrade the Watches plugin as even deactivating it first, then uploadeing a new ZIP file results in  http://***/wp-admin/update.php?action=upload-sp-plugin showing a blank page, the plugin isn’t upgraded and my php_error log doesn’t show any info.

Oh boy

I’ll have to attend to this in more detail later.

Suffice it to say, it appears that this issue is with me not upgrading plugins, expecting that Simple:Press would be.

1. Both the Simple:Press core (WP) plugin and individual Simple:Press plugin and theme updates are made available in the main WordPress update panel under your WP dashboard. You will find them listed there and you can automatically update them there. You do not need to ask for that feature – you already have it.
2. We would very much like to be able to deliver updates on a dependency basis but sadly WordPress does not support that as yet – maybe one day it will and we will be able to make use of it.
3. So – failing 2 – as a general rule when an update to the main SP is made available – often to deal with changes in the WordPress core – then we will also issue any updates to our own plugins that may be required. This happened with this particular change some 2 or 3 versions ago. These changes were also listed on our Codex site under ‘changes’.
4. We do NOT, never have, and never will email users. Unless they have signed up and are current members we have no idea of their email addresses in any case.
5. I do not know exactly how you updated the Watches plugin but it rather sounds like you either have two copies or – more likely – the folder name for the plugin has been changed. It should just be ‘watches’. Anything else will cause problems. Please check that. By default it will be under wp-content/sp-resources/forum-plugins/watches/.

We do NOT, never have, and never will email users.

To be fair, I suggested emailing the plugin providers; the developers whose plugins were being effected by a deprecated function that was due to be removed in a future release… not to email users in general.

Seems a responsible approach to take when Simple:Press core is altered to the point where in-use functions were marked for removal.

The alternative appears to be to leave plugins being downloaded that would (eventually) break Simple:Press.

I do not know exactly how you updated the Watches plugin

Well, after attempting to conjurer up Satan and his Dominion using several dead animals and a copy of WordPress for Dummies had no effect on upgrading the plugin, I choose instead to use Simple:Press Administration / Plugin Uploader </saracasm>

but it rather sounds like you either have two copies or – more likely – the folder name for the plugin has been changed.

Neither. Folder name has not changed, no duplicates, access rights all OK etc.

I ended up using Simple:Press Administration to deactivate/delete the plugin, FTP’ing the new files over, activating the plugin again using Simple:Press Administration.

Did the same thing for the Subscription plugin.

The warning message has in my original topic is no longer displaying.  Good.

I’m in the process of transferring everything to a new server, so I’ll postpone investigating why I seem not to be able to use Simple:Press to upload/upgrade plugins until early next year.

Thanks for your comments.

I am surprised… conjuring up Satan and his Dominion using several dead animals and a copy of WordPress for Dummies has definitely worked before

I thought you may have encountered this problem – http://codex.simple-press.com/codex/faq/troubleshooting/simplepress-plugin-activation-errors/ – which is really a WordPress bug.

All the plugin you may use (the SP plugins) are coded here by us. There are no current third party SP plugins that we are aware of.