I have just upgraded blog.selectdigitals.com to WordPress version 2.7. I did this after testing the new version both offline on my test-bed PC and online at blogtest.info. Along with the new WordPress version, I had also installed and tested the basic plugins I use.
Since I had thoroughly tested the new WordPress version and also had backups of the old WordPress files and database, I was not too concerned about the upgrade. Because I had good backups, I knew that I could quickly restore the old WordPress blog if all else failed.
It should be noted that my online blog exists in it’s own wordpress directory, and not in the root directory.
I deactivated all of my plugins. I then deleted all of the online blog files except for the following:
Root Directory
- index.php
- .htaccess
- robots.txt
- favicon.ico
WordPress Directory
- wp-config.php
- /wp-content/plugins/
Next, I unzipped and uploaded the new WordPress files into the wordpress directory.
Crossing my fingers, I browsed to wp-admin and, with a mouse click, upgraded the database.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was now running WordPress 2.7 and all of my posts were present and accounted for. The theme was, of course, not my own but was the original Kubrick.
I used the document,“WordPress Comes to Select Digitals” as a guide to the theme files I needed to upload. I uploaded copies of the files I had already prepared on my test sites and quickly restored the theme. There were only a couple of navigation-text changes I had to make to the files. I also uploaded the images I had modified for my theme to the new default theme’s images folder.
Note: Instead of overwriting the original default theme files for Kubrick, I renamed them. For example, I renamed the default style.css file to original-style.css. Then, I uploaded the customized and pre-tested theme files without overwriting the default Kubrick theme files—just in case. I also did the same for the default images folder before uploading my custom-theme images
Finally, I activated my plugins one at a time. I activated Super-Cache last. Because I have installed Super-Cache so many times, and also had the required .htaccess file already in the root directory, I was able to restore the plugin very quickly. I just had to modify the permissions to a couple of folders.
As part of the upgrade, I did an automatic update for the Sociable plugin. I am certainly going to love automatic updates.
I can understand how many of the upgrade problems I see on the WordPress forum can happen. Even with all of “my ducks in a row,” I have to admit that I felt relieved when the upgrade was completed.
Because of my testing beforehand, and because I did document the changes I have made to the default Kubrick theme, I was able to essentially do a new WordPress install (saving only a few of the original files); and after uploading a few pre-tested theme files—I was back in business.
The last upgrade task was, of course, to do both a backup of the new online WordPress files and the mySQL database.
With a good backup of both the old WordPress files and database in case of difficulties, and with a good record of previous theme changes, it was possible to complete the upgrade in very little time—and with very low stress.
