by Scott Frangos, Managing Partner - WebFadds.com

Time to upgrade WordPress? Just wave your wand — well almost… there are a couple of tricky things to avoid. WordPress puts out 2-4 upgrades per year, with a major upgrade about every ten months. We do upgrades for $49 (on our servers), or $79 (on your server) — we’ll include six essential plugins, and twelve themes.

Avoid a big trap — do not use the automatic upgrade utility your host provides, like Fantastico, or our own Elefante Installer at WebFaddsHosting.com. Why? Two reasons. If you installed WordPress originally using a clean manual install (as we do it), then this will most likely pull your site down — and require more time and expense to restore it.

If you originally installed with an auto-installer, then it might go ok — when the installer company and your hosting company get around to including the newest edition of WordPress. Even so, you are relying on the auto-installer, another program on top of WordPress and everything else, to manage things. This adds another layer of software, and complexity, when you need to troubleshoot website problems. So again, it’s best to do it manually.

What about plugins that do automatic upgrades? Elsewhere I wrote of a plugin I liked for a while — but then I had a problem with an upgrade and had to reinstall from scratch. Make you nervous? That’s why I went to manual installs as standard policy. But never fear, here are five steps to keep your data safe as you upgrade:

Steps for a smooth WordPress Upgrade

1. Perform two backups: With our standard installation we include a plugin which you can use to download an immediate database back-up to your hard disk. That’s back-up number one. Back-up number two is done using the “Manage>Export” function in your Admin. area to download an XML file of your data. Now you’re double protected.
   
   Above, the backup plugin (configured for you in our standard installation), should be used to “download to your computer,” a complete backup to disk prior to upgrading WordPress.

2. Turn off all Plugins: Turn them off in the plugin area to avoid any conflicts during the upgrade process. You can print or save the page first so you remember which ones were on and which were off.
3. Download the latest Version: Get the latest version of WordPress and unzip it.
4. Perform the Upgrade: If you are doing it yourself, go to the WordPress codex and follow instructions there (be sure to delete the appropriate files prior to the upgrade using FTP, and to retain the appropriate files without overwriting them).
5. Restore your Plugins: Turn them back on and cross your fingers… if the plugin author is on the ball, their program will work with the latest version of WordPress.

And, on that last point about Plugins working with new versions of WordPress — a good policy is to wait a few weeks after a major upgrade of WordPress, and check at your essential plugin author’s site to see if there’s a notice that it is compatible with the newest version of WordPress. You may have to limp along for a while without a couple plugins until they are updated.

Remember that the nature of WordPress is that it is a collaborative symphony of software components. People have asked me, what if a plugin author walks away and does not upgrade a plugin? This has happened. Sometimes a new author takes their place and gives the plugin a much needed facelift and retrofit. Sometimes you can hire an independent PHP programmer to customize the plugin or write one from scratch. Sometimes there’s a new plugin that performs a similar function. Sometimes… you just have to walk away, like the plugin author did. What? Just remember, you didn’t pay anything for the original program… and you should really “tip” your plugin developers (most have paypal links in the admin. area) so they stay motivated and focused on their work.

Contact WebFadds.com, and we’ll do all the steps listed for you when you need to upgrade your WordPress website.

Tags: Hosting, News, WordPress CMS Help //