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Wordpress 2.5 has just been released last week and today, I’m happy to say that I’ve upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress. I took a gamble this time and used a plug-in to automatically upgrade my blog. Here are my thoughts about it.

Introduction to Wordpress Automatic Upgrade Plug-in

This plug-in aims to automate what used to be the manual process of upgrading wordpress. Before, we need to back-up our files and database, deactivate the plug-ins, replace the contents of our wordpress folder except the wp-content folder, then reactivate the plug-ins one by one. If you need more info on the manual upgrading of wordpress, you can check out my guide on how to upgrade to wordpress 2.3 (the guide still works even if it’s for wordpress 2.5).

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade Plug-in Process

Wordpress automatic upgrade upgrades your wordpress installation by doing the following steps. (Source)

1. Backs up the files and makes available a link to download it.
2. Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
3. Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips it.
4. Puts the site in maintenance mode.
5. De-activates all active plugins and remembers it.
6. Upgrades wordpress files.
7. Gives you a link that will open in a new window to upgrade installation.
8. Re-activates the plugins.

As you can see, the process is very similar to the manual process.

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade Plug-in at work

Well, here’s a step by step with screenshots of the plug-in where I tried to upgrade my own blog. As of writing, my blog is now running under Wordpress 2.5 so let us start my upgrade experience.

The plug-in did some preliminary checks before doing the upgrade. I have no idea what the checks were. All I know that my blog passed and I’m now ready for the next step. You can opt to choose the automatic option to make it a one-click upgrade process. (btw, the new adding image in the post looks cool although it’s slow to load)

The first step is to backup the files. I tried the download link and I’m only getting 28kilobytes. I was in doubt of the size of the file so I logged in to my ftp and saw the real file. It’s about 600kilobytes. So I downloaded it from there. It might been an issue on my cache. When I browsed inside the file, all the wordpress files are there except for the wp-content folder. Do take note of this.

Next step is to back-up the db. It is very similar to the wp-db-backup plug-in.

After it has finished making a back-up of your database, you can now download it. I suggest you download it via FTP just to be sure. Now we move on to the next step.

The plug-in will tell you that it wants to download the latest wordpress installer from wordpress.org. Will you allow it? Of course you will, now let’s move on.

After downloading the files, the next step is to put the blog in maintenance mode. Just click and move on.

It will tell you that it has placed the blog in maintenance mode. However, when I checked, it wasn’t on maintenance. I think it’s a bug because my files are located in /blog/ while the blog address is location at the root domain. I’m not really sure but it’s my guess so at this point, I was basically doing the upgrade while the blog is live. It’s something that you should not do since it will drive your visitors away.

Next step is to deactivate all your plug-ins. I was really panicking here because the blog is not under maintenance mode. So I quickly pressed next.

After this click, I was happy since it has replaced all the files. It just took 1-3 seconds (more on page loading time) and everything was ok, now it will try to reactivate the plug-ins it deactivated. But wait, before that, make sure you run the upgrade.php first by clicking the link you see there. It’s very important since it will make wordpress upgrade your database.

Then I clicked again to move on to the next step. To my surprise,I was brought to a log-in screen. I logged in and this is the screen I got. I was thinking, oh no! What’s wrong?

I tried to do the upgrade again and I was informed that my previous upgrade attempt was not finished so it needs to do some clean-up. I’m glad that the author included a clean-up in situations like this. I hope he incorporates a roll-back feature soon.

Well, I’m not sure on how to proceed so I just did the upgrade again. This time, I did it automatically and it finished within 10 seconds. Now that is some fast upgrading.

So now it’s complete, I just checked and my plug-ins are now activated. The wordpress dashboard has a new look and feel which I’m still trying to get used to. I can say, my upgrade to wordpress 2.5 was a success and it was fast thanks to the wordpress automatic upgrade plug-in.

So there it is, my complete upgrade to wordpress 2.5 experience. So as an end of post thingy, let me ask you some guide questions.

• What do you think of the wordpress upgrade plug-in?
• Will you use it to upgrade or will you upgrade it manually?
• Have you upgraded to wordpress 2.5 already?
• How do you like wordpress 2.5’s interface compared to the old one?
• Why are you not commenting on my post? ^_^

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