Guide to upgrading your wordpress installation
I think a lot of bloggers will agree with me when I say Wordpress is the best platform out here. We all love it.
But, and yes I’m sorry there’s a but, I hate upgrading it. A new version this week, and update the next week. Bugfix here, bugfix there … Upgrading is a biatch. Sure, we can all count our blessings that the people from WP are kind enough to keep on fixing and improving it, but lets face it, people are lazy (And I’m a person to dammit).
Lately, I’m helping more and more people setting up a Wordpress blog, and obviously, the question arises, what’s this upgrading thing? How do you do that?
So I’d figure to post a little guide I can point people to instead of writing the same email dozens of times.
Here goes:
Simply put, there are two ways of upgrading your WP.
- The auto-download way
- The manual way
Lets talk a bit about the first option.
The auto-download way is by far the easiest way to do it. This is just a WP plugin you have to install in order to upgrade your installation. Press a few buttons and voila, it’s done.
The second option is doing everything yourself aka as manually updating.
The first thing you have to do is create a backup of your entire Wordpress database. That way, if something goes wrong, all that hard work won’t be lost. So how do you do this?
Simple, you either use a plugin for that, like WP Database Backup Plugin from Il Filosofo, or you use MyPHPadmin to access and backup the database.
Also, if you are a backup freak like myself, you can create a backup of all the Wordpress files. You never know right?
Next, you head over to the Wordpress website and download the latest version. Your best bet is to always download it from there, not any other website. You never know who altered it in any way.
Okay, now we’re ready to start with your blog. If you have any plugins running at your current blog, disable them now. You can activate them again when the upgrade is completed.
Important to know is that there are some files that we are going to leave alone. So do NOT delete them.
Those are:
- wp-content folder
- wp-config.php
- wp-images folder
- wp-includes/languages (if your blog is using any other language than english)
- .htaccess file
- robots.txt
Next you upload the new files from the latest Wordpress release (the one you just downloaded) to your server. Important again, do NOT overwrite the files we listed above.
Almost there people, keep it up. In your browser go to www.your-blog-url.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php
Check if all is running fine and dandy. Re-activate your plugins and off you go. You’ve just upgraded your Wordpress site.
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2 Responses to “Guide to upgrading your wordpress installation”
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I’ve tried Techbuzz Auto Update but it was not successful. So end up doing the manual way.
That’s weird. They both worked fine for me.
But then again, doing it manually is still the best way in my opinion.
Chrz