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What You Should Know About Upgrading to WordPress 2.1

February 19th, 2007 by David Bradley >> 3 Comments

Still not taken the plunge to upgrade your WordPress blog to the all-new version 2.1? Maybe you’ve got a stack of plugins, and a handsomely tweaked theme, and really don’t want to run the risk of it all going to pieces when you flip the essentially irreversible upgrade switch. Well you’re not alone. While thousands of blogs jumped quickly enough from earlier versions all the way up to the previously current 2.0.7, many more have opted not to make the leap from the 2.0.x series to the 2.1 series just yet.

To help allay your fears Lorelle on WordPress.com walks bloggers through the steps required to take the plunge, but also provides information on setting up a test blog just to see how many of your plugins and theme features are compatible with the new version.

Put simply, here are the upgrade steps, she recommends:

  1. Download version 2.1 from the WordPress site
  2. Backup everything, including your WordPress Theme files
  3. Backup everything, including your WordPress Theme files!
  4. Deactivate all WordPress Plugins
  5. Delete the old WordPress core files (important!)
  6. Upload the new WordPress core files
  7. Open the upgrade dialog page and click yes to upgrade
  8. Reactivate your plugins one by one, testing the site as you go
  9. Sit back and watch the traffic continue to roll in

But, there always going to be glitches, so take care out in upgrade land.


Leave a comment ↓

  • David Bradley // Feb 22, 2007 at 6:31 pm

    Anyone on version 2.0 should note that there was another upgrade recently to take you to 2.0.9, but I believe the developers recommend that you upgrade to 2.1.x anyway.

  • David Bradley // Mar 6, 2007 at 1:19 pm

    If you upgraded to wordpress 2.1.1 within the last week, then there’s yet another upgrade required to take you to 2.1.2. This one is urgent though as the files on the WP server for 2.1.1 were cracked and a nasty security loophole opened. So it’s vital that you upgrade ASAP.

    Of course, if you’re still on 2.0.x then you can save yourself the trouble. Or wait a little while to let the dust settle.

  • David Bradley // Apr 3, 2007 at 12:15 pm

    Just for the record Sciencetext finally took the leap to the 2.1.x fork from the 2.0.x. 2.1.x is now up to version 2.1.3 and 2.0.x is up to version 2.0.10

    UPDATE: Hopefully, a few of you noticed that the site was down for a short period today. We’ve had to jump to a new host, as the old one got hacked, I won’t name names but it’s no secret that they’re not in nirvana, really. Anyway, took me a while to get things up and running again. But, thankfully, once I figured out the Sciencetext config file had not been carried over to the new install on our shiny new host, it was all plain sailing. Just for future reference, it is vital that you keep a solid backup of your wp-config.php file if you ever have to change hosts, although you will undoubtedly have to edit it once you make the move, anyway, embedding the new username, MySQL database name and password etc. Oh, the delights of being a chemist, when it comes to doing coding, programming and MySQL shifting

    Thanks for your patience, db