Well, this blog might not be the well best known one in the web and for sure it does not glance with the most visits, nevertheless it was already time to perform an upgrade fom the initial WordPress version 2.2 to the latest stable built 2.7.1.
I was not happy about many things from the old version and finally, latest plugin distributions required at least a 2.3, 2.4 or any version higher than 2.2. So it was an easy one to decide, but much harder to take the risk and perform the upgrade.
Of course, the three step approach on the WordPress homepage looked simple and attractive but according to Murphy I was pretty sure to encounter issues. „Don’t bother“ I thought and started to run a backup of the entire WP root directory and of course of the underlaying MySQL database – the heart of any WP installation.
It was also recommended to turn off all plugins on the existing installation, which I did. Of course.
A few minutes later, according to the three steps approach, I had the 2.7.1 distribution downloaded from the WP site and uploaded to my hoster’s WP root directory. That was simple.
The final step was the moment of thruth. Would WP start without issues? Would I have to run a rollback procedure followed by the much more complicated full upgrade approach? … I was so excited that I misstyped my own blog’s URL for three or four times… But it worked! There where no issues – at least so far.
After checking a bunch of articles, specialities (like pages and subpages in hierarchical order, tags, etc.) I found a few troubles that I solved within a day. And I changed the layout template in addition.
Some tips for possible upgraders:
- After WP upgrade, upgrade the plugins as well. This is quite comfortable thanks to the new user interface.
- Check whether your template supports al your features needed (the WP themes repository is still not handy in this aspect). If not, you might be smart enough to take some sources from different templates and generate your own.
- Simple Tagging: You need to import the old tags that were generated by previous version from that plugin. Use Tools -> Import and choose Simple Tagging. Again three simple steps to follow…