Well after spending about 2 hours on the code after work, I finally gotten around to fixing the sidebar. At first I managed to get the Links displaying properly, but I couldn’t get the picture to display next to the links. But with the help of a uni friend of mine, Praetorian, he helped me fix that small problem. It was just a simply matter of editing the current funtion and editing the SQL query.
Also I mentioned how 2.1 doesn’t have a HTML editor, well I spoke too soon. The default was already a HTML editor. But if you wish to switch to visual editor, just goto Users->User Profile and check the box that says “Use the visual editor when writing”. So far it’s rather well done and switching between visual and code is much much smoother. Also the loading of the admin sections are faster than previously.
So a word of advice for those wanting to upgrade to WordPress 2.1. Ensure that your theme and plugins are all compatible with 2.1. But if you are adventurous, and know PHP, you could go ahead and modify your own.
congrats on that. SQL knowledge is knowledge!