Web Designer, Entrepreneur

Wordpress 2.5 was released yesterday which means thousands of wordpress blogs will be upgraded in the near future.
I went through the upgrade last night and I am happy to say it went without a hitch. The process of upgrading is rather smooth, however you should follow a few safety steps before upgrading to save yourself from headaches.

1. First of all update all plugins you use on your blog to the latest stable version. Follow the plugin’s update instructions.

2. Once you successfully updated your plugins go ahead and backup everything. And I mean everything. This is not the time to get lazy an confident that nothing bad can happen. Backup all your wordpress files using FTP and backup all tables in your database. I used phpMyAdmin to create a full backup but you can also use Wordpress Database Backup plugin to easily create your database backup. This is very important because if something goes wrong with your upgrade you can always restore your website using your backups in just a few minutes.

3. Now that you have your back covered login into your wordpress admin and go to plugins. Deactivate all plugins you see there. This will protect your new blog from any incompatibilities with your plugins.

Now you can proceed with your wordpress 2.5 upgrade
You’ve done all the necessary steps to ensure save upgrade so now you can proceed to the real thing.

Here’s how I did it.

1. I logged into my blog through FTP and deleted everything except these files and directories.
Files: .htaccess, robot.txt, wp-conf.php
Directories: /wp-content
You might as well have some other files and directories there. Keep those. If you made hacks to your wordpress files in the past you will have to redo them once finished with the upgrade.

2. I uploaded the new files except the /wp-content directory.

3. Now I uploaded all files in the /wp-content individually to the server. This way I avoided overwriting my customized files and directories (like themes and plugins).

4. After all the files were in place I went to http://www.domain.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php and followed the instructions on that page. This will upgrade your wordpress database.

All done. Now all you have to do is to check your blog to make sure everything is fine and to login into your wp admin and re-activate your plugins. Make sure you activate them one by one while checking your blog after each plugin activation. Some themes might need some correcting.

I hope these tips will help you with your wordpress upgrade to the lates 2.5 version. I highly recommend upgrading because I like all the new features as well as the new admin look. It definitely makes my blogging more fun.

Good luck.