If you noticed some funny wordpress errors for the last 15 minutes, Quick Online Tips was just upgraded to the latest version of WordPress 2.0.4.
This is my first upgrade since I moved from Blogger about 5 months ago and had exported my blogger posts and comments to WordPress. That time my version was WordPress 2.0.2. I failed to upgrade to WordPress 2.0.3 which was released soon after I started on WordPress (you can say this wordpress newbie was scared to upgrade). But over time I have got familiar with the power of WordPress, PHP, MySQL, databases etc., and today took the final push to upgrade to WordPress 2.0.4, which was released about a month ago.
The actual WordPress upgrade was all over in about 15 minutes and was actually very simple. Thankfully the upgrade was successful. The official WordPress Upgrade instructions were very helpful. I suggest you reread those upgrade guidelines 3 times fully to be absolutely sure of what you are doing (that is not part of those 15 minutes!).
Before you do anything, back up is the most essential part. I backed up my database using the WordPress Database Backup plugin (comes preinstalled with WordPress) and saved a copy to my desktop, and verified it was working. My Dreamhost webhosting also provides another suggested tool called phpMyAdmin to effectively back up my database.
Then I deactivated all plugins. That was the start of the wordpress errors. The related posts plugins was the first to stop and break the blog wherever it appeared in the template code.
Then I deleted the wp-admin folder, wp-includes folder (I had no wp-includes/languages/ to preserve) and the wp-content/cache folder. That was when the big wordpress errors appeared and the blog was only a page of errors. Then I replaced them with similar folders from my new wordpress download.
Then I fixed my root folder where wordpress is hosted (which is /archives in my case; see how I hosted WordPress in an alternative directory); then one by one I matched the files, deleted the old files and replaced them with the new wordpress files.
I took care not to delete anything important like the wp-config.php file (with my database login details) or the wp-content folder (which has all content, plugins, themes, images and uploads). The exception was the wp-content/cache folder which was deleted. Since my trusted FTP client Filezilla hides several files, I did not need to tackle the .htaccess file anywhere. (you need to back up the .htaccess file if you perform lots of custom tweaks in it).
Since I had earlier configured my wp-rss2.php files such the feeds show related posts, I checked that there was no difference between the new and old files, so did not need to recustomize that file. You can check for old and non updated files in the wordpress download by seeing the dates the files were created.
When I tried to login to WordPress now, it asked for a database upgrade, and upon clicking the link it was all done in one click. I was logged on to the WordPress dashboard, I activated the plugins one by one … and Quick Online Tips was back online on the new WordPress version.
WordPress upgrades are important not only for feature upgrades, but also to fix lots of bugs and security issues that may compromise WordPress. So if you find this story inspiring, download WordPress 2.0.4 today and upgrade. Do not forget to back up everything well…