My (sorta) painless upgrade to Wordpress 2.5.
When I thought about writing this post this morning I couldn’t help but think of that Comcast commercial -
The commercial where the guy goes and gets tiger stripes all over his body and then calls the tattoo guy from his NEW “Comcast digital Voice phone….”
“Sorry Roger - You tiger now!…”
I guess that’s how I felt when I was upgrading my Wordpress to The NEW Wordpress 2.5. If I mess it up, it’s permanent. I figured I would let you all know that it was easy to upgrade - but wanted to warn you to not be a dummy, like Roger - Or myself, TheBlogSearcher. lol.
Last night, I noticed a tweet came in from Lisa Sabin-Wilson about the new Wordpress 2.5. And I followed her link to her site and read about the new 2.5.
I was VERY excited at all the new changes and I thought, I am going to give this a try. I have (now) 5 different blogs that I work on, so lets try the upgrade on the one that is still fairly new and does not have very many files. One that I will be able to backup and replace with no problem.
I gotta teach myself how to do this stuff eventually, so let’s do it I thought!
I downloaded the 2.5 upgrade over at Wordpress.org
Read all I could about all the new changes, and followed the link to the page where it tells you just how to upgrade.
I kept that page open and opened up my FTP. I followed the instructions to a tee. Made a backup of my site, and deactivated all my plugins.
I started the process of uploading all the files to my FTP, put them in the proper place, but for some reason, it didn’t work.
I wanted to cry. I almost emailed Tech Support - asking them to fix it for me, but I thought - “You gotta stop whining to tech support and think this out. ” (but …Roger, you tiger now….)
And I did. I copied and pasted the *error* I kept getting and found my way to the forum. I read in the help forum that I was “missing files” and that the upload had not uploaded all the files I needed properly.
Ok, I thought to myself, we will look at all the files. When I viewed the wp admin file folder - it was empty! So, for that first site I uploaded every file individually. What a pain that was. But I was still done in under 15 minutes.
I could not understand though, why all the files were in the download - but not when I uploaded. I must have done something wrong. Then, it hit me -
When I opened the Wordpress zip file - I did a drag and drop. NOT a cut and paste.
So then, I reopened my Wordpress zip file and cut it out and pasted it onto my desktop. Now, I was onto my second installation - this site, TheBlogSearcher.com. I crossed my fingers and…
I opened up my Wordpress file, and started uploading first the admin files, then the includes. I saved the WP-content for last as I wanted to take care not to delete any plugins or themes that I wanted. When I was done, I typed the address I needed to go to in my browser, and TaDA! There it was, “your files have been upgraded, please continue here..”
It worked like a charm. I had the whole thing done in probably 7 minutes. 
Was about 5 minutes when I uploaded/upgraded my Simple-Mindz site. Done.
I still have 2 more blogs to upgrade, but they are not high on my priority list as they are in the infant stage. But, I gotta tell you, it really was easy to upgrade to the “New 2.5.” And I gotta tell you, the new 2.5 is AWESOME!
So now, yeah - That’s right…..I am writing this post entry in my NEW “Wordpress 2.5 upgrade….”
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There’s ALWAYS something that will go wrong, but congratulations on keeping a level head and sorting out the problem.
I keep a server at home (bought cheap on eBay) that runs a copy of my websites, that way I can experiment with upgrades and plugins and make my mistakes before changing the live copies. Saved my online skin many times.
Andymurd,Thanks ! I was really excited that I was actually able to do it all by myself!
That’s a great idea for a server. I was thinking of making a “test” site for things like that.
Wow your incredible, beautiful and smart! I am also a wordpress blogger. When I upgraded to 2.3.3 I wimped out and called tech support. It was so messy that when I saw 2.5 came out I decided to wait until the bugs fell out and 2.5.1 was released. “Still waiting” I bookmarked your excellent post to use as a resource when I try it again! Thanks so much.
Mark, Thanks again! I would NOT go that far though. I think I am a small smidge of smart when it comes to computers! That’s about it though. LOL.
Check the plugin pages of Wordpress, I think they actually have a plugin that upgrades the site for you!