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Now is Always a Good Time to Upgrade Wordpress

February 8th, 2008 · by David Bradley >> 18 Comments

Wordpress logoI finally upgraded my Sciencebase site to the latest version of Wordpress, it had been languishing at version 2.1.3 for far too long and there have been many security upgrades between that legacy version and the current version 2.3.3. It was a post by Wayne Liew on the cleverly named Wayne Liew Dot Com that persuaded me to do the necessary.

Liew points out that upgrading to the most recent version of Wordpress can help protect your site from minor security flaws. For instance, the recent 2.3.2 to 2.3.3 upgrade is required simply because it circumvents a security problem by which registered users can edit other users’ posts, which is obviously not a good thing. Even that single file upgrade is worth doing if it prevents someone hacking your site.

Liew strongly recommends using the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade Plugin (WPAU) but I must say it was with trepidation that I investigated how easy an upgrade from such an old version would be either done manually or automated.

I had manually upgraded from a 1.5 version or thereabouts and found it to be rather painful in terms of backing up files, deleting old files and folders, remembering which ones not to delete, resetting file permissions etc etc, so I was very tempted to use WPAU.

The plugin backs up your files and database, deactivates plugins, downloads the Wordpress upgrade files, installs them, reactivates only those plugins that were deactivated, cleans up temporary files and points you to the final “database upgrade” link in Wordpress that reboots your site.

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade

Here’s a quick tip for those wanting to upgrade – try WPAU on a smaller, less important site first. If it all works perfectly then it will give you the confidence to undertake an automated upgrade on your main site.

The tip obviously only applies if you have more than one site, and if one of them is less important to you than the other. My successful upgrade of the smaller site (albeit only jumping from 2.3.2 to 2.3.3) convinced me and so I undertook an upgrade of Sciencebase WPAU.

Of course, if you’re on a host with the Fantastico system you have automated Wordpress upgrades built in. The only problem is that Fantastico usually lags behind the current release (at the time of writing, it’s sitting at 2.3.2, in fact)

Sciencebase screenshot

Anyway, WPAU worked perfectly, first time, which was an amazing relief. However, having been using a 2.1.5 widgetized system the final result was a messed up sidebar that took a few little tweaks to fix (some widgets were missing and others were in the incorrect order, although that may have been down to caching problems rather than the upgrade itself).

However, one or two plugins simply failed to run in the latest version (Top Posts by Category and Get Recent Comments, for instance). I removed these altogether pending the release of compatible updates. Other than that I’ve had no problems. Several other plugins were flagged as requiring upgrades, and these were duly done. If you happen to visit Sciencebase.com and spot any problems I’ve not seen, perhaps you could let me know.

Next week: How to Steal a Wordpress Theme. Subscribe to the Sig Figs feed to be alerted.

18 responses so far ↓

  • Animati // Feb 11, 2008 at 3:40 am

    Thank you for well-timed prompt! I’ll update my wordpress-based photoblog today.

    Animati’s last blog post..Bee Gee’s Yawn

  • David Bradley // Feb 12, 2008 at 2:00 pm

    Although Sig Figs was at version 2.3.2 of Wordpress and it would have been simpler just to download the single file update required to take it to 2.3.3, I thought I’d better stand by my assertions in this post and use WPAU. It worked (eventually). I had to do several page refreshes during the automated update. And, although everything was fine in the end, I can see that some users might panic and think they’ve trashed their site when they see blank screens. Don’t panic. Just do a full refresh of the page at whatever stage it stalls at, and repeat until you get the link to move on to the next step.

    db

  • Deborah // Feb 14, 2008 at 12:50 am

    David,

    I was glad to hear your good news about upgrading WordPress with this plugin. Like you, I was very concerned about upgrading. I used the plugin, and it worked, but I could not download the backup files.

    While I’m glad the upgrade worked (at least I think it worked! I’m still checking the pages), I was very disappointed that it did not allow me to download the backup files.

    Each time I tried to download, all I got was a page not found error. I checked the files online to see if they were on my site, but couldn’t find the backup files. All I found in the wpau-backup folder were an empty index.php and an empty index.html file, with no content.

  • David Bradley // Feb 14, 2008 at 8:08 am

    Deborah, if it worked, then it doesn’t matter about the backup files (this time). Next time do a manual backup before you run the plugin, just in case the same thing happens again. Your blog is definitely showing the latest version, right?

    db

  • David Bradley // Feb 14, 2008 at 9:17 am

    Wordpress version 2.5 is on its way. In fact, you can trial it now http://wp.chrisjohnston.org/?p=3

    db

  • Deborah // Feb 14, 2008 at 12:35 pm

    Hi David,

    Being the cautious person I am, I did do a backup before I ran the plugin. I was glad it worked! But a bit concerned that the plugin’s backup didn’t work.

    Yes, the site I used this on has been updated correctly and is showing the most recent version.

  • David Bradley // Feb 14, 2008 at 1:52 pm

    Deborah, it worked fine on the various blogs I ran it on. I guess we’ll never know why you couldn’t get the backups within the plugin itself…

    …as with all plugins there could be a conflict with another plugin. Maybe the way to do it next time would be to deactivate all plugins manually except WPUA, and then reactivate once everything is complete. I realize that’s starting to negate some of the benefits of WPUA, but it would still make the upgrade process simpler than a total manual upgrade.

    db

  • Deborah // Feb 15, 2008 at 2:29 am

    Brian,

    Good suggestion. I’ll turn off the plugins the next time, before I use the upgrade plugin. Hopefully I’ll remember to come back and report if it worked any better!

  • David Bradley // Feb 15, 2008 at 7:30 am

    Deborah…who’s Brian?

    Yes, please do, this is likely to be an ongoing thread especially as Wordpress 2.5 is on its way next month.

    db

  • Deborah // Mar 29, 2008 at 1:10 am

    Hi David,

    Not sure where I found the name David. My apologies!

    I read a review of WordPress 2.5 earlier today. If this gets through (I wasn’t sure if you accepted urls in your comments) – here’s the site:

    http://tinyurl.com/2s8g6j

  • David Bradley // Apr 1, 2008 at 3:06 pm

    Well as most Wordpress bloggers will know by now, the program has reached version 2.5 and it’s soooo much slicker and better than the previous versions, so now really is the time to upgrade. Double check your backups, make sure you know which plugins will fail and take the plunge!

    db

  • Gaida // Apr 10, 2008 at 3:01 am

    Hi David,
    Thanks for your detailed post on the importance of upgrading wordpress.

    I must admit I was lagging with my upgrades & was very wary about doing it. Thankfully all went well. Haven’t taken the jump to 2.5 as yet.

    I’d also heard about deactivating your plugins before upgrading even with the WPAU. I have noticed that a link has appeared informing me there is an upgrade.

    Gaida’s last blog post..Understanding Motivation

  • David Bradley // Apr 10, 2008 at 7:42 am

    Deactivating plugins is an essential, but with WPAU it reactivates only those that were active before the upgrade so any disabled plugins that happen to be in your folder don’t get inadvertently started. Jump to 2.5, security and features make it a must. 2.6 is on its way soon, though…

    db

  • Halim-Belajar SEO // Jul 11, 2008 at 10:59 pm

    Wordpress now getting great and I’m still stuck with my blogspot. Hope at the end of this month I will migrate to own domain using wordpress.

    Halim-Belajar SEOs last blog post..Create your own free website | Step by step | newbie guide

  • David Bradley // Jul 17, 2008 at 1:18 pm

    Just upgraded to the latest version 2.6 using WPAU once again, worked perfectly on both my main blogs. Lots of new features including active/inactive plugins displayed separately, which is nice.

  • Vineet Kumar // Jul 22, 2008 at 3:14 pm

    updates must be like a plugin, wordpress is releasing new versions almost every month, it is sad to update again and again, Grrr hectic job for a lazy person like me.

    Vineet Kumars last blog post..Working as freelancer

  • John Landon // Aug 24, 2008 at 11:58 pm

    I have used the automatic upgrade on some test sites and it worked fine, but I am afraid to use it on my main site (with massive archives and database) because I don’t understand how to rollback (the database especially( if there is a problem.
    How do you rollback the database if there is a problem?

  • David Bradley // Aug 26, 2008 at 5:54 pm

    John – You’d have backed it up properly before upgrading, of course. So the procedure would be to simply install the previous version of Wordpress and then “import” the backed up database using MySQL under phpMyAdmin in your web site’s control panel.

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