Complete Guide to Upgrading to WordPress 2.5

WordPress 2.5 was released earlier this week and it brings an array of new features that most of us have been looking forward to. However, I found the documentation on upgrading to be very vague. While the upgrade is a simple process, I thought a more detailed explanation of the steps to take would be valuable to everyone who wants to do the upgrade. I have broken down the upgrade into nine simple steps that will make sure your WordPress upgrade goes smoothly and error free.

1. Download the WordPress 2.5 package: The first thing to do is go to the WordPress homepage and download the latest WordPress package. Save the ZIP file to your desktop, or wherever is easiest for you to manage. Once the download is complete unzip the entire package. You should now have a folder named wordpress with all the new WordPress files in it. I recommend renaming this folder to new-wordpress so not to get confused later on.
2. Backup your database: I hope this goes without saying but I’ve put it down here just as a reminder. You should download your complete database in full structure and data. I use the plugin WP-DB-Backup, which sends daily backups of my WordPress database to my email automatically. I highly recommend this extension as it allows you to automate your backup process.
3. Download all your files: Even though you are going to be replacing all your old files with the new WordPress files it will be good to have a backup of the old ones for restore purposes. If anything goes wrong with the upgrade you will now have all the files and the database from before the upgrade. The other part here is that you will need the contents of the wp-content folder and the wp-config.php file after you upload all the new WordPress files.
4. Edit the wp-config.php file: Open up the folder with the new WordPress files in it. In this folder there should be a file named wp-config-sample.php. Rename this file to wp-config.php then open it in a text editor. Here you will be able to enter your database name, username and password. You can get this information from the wp-config.php file from your old WordPress files which you just downloaded. Most of the other settings in this file can usually be left as default, but check with your host to make sure.
5. Upload new WordPress files: Once you have downloaded all the old WordPress files it will be time to upload the new ones. I recommend deleting the old files on your web server first, just to make sure your FTP program doesn’t skip over any by accident. Find the folder you renamed earlier to new-wordpress and upload all the new files in the folder to the same directory that you just removed your old WordPress files from.
6. Upload the old wp-content folder: Go back to your old WordPress files which you downloaded earlier and upload your plugins, uploaded files, and themes from the wp-content folder. This is a good time to check your plugins directory to make sure you are not uploading any old plugins which you are not using anymore.
7. Update your WordPress database to version 2.5 : Point your browser to www.your-domain.tld/wp-admin/upgrade.php and a WordPress update page should appear. Click on continue and your database upgrade should be underway. Depending on the amount of content on your website, this may be instantaneous or could take a few minutes. When the upgrade is complete, you should now be running WordPress 2.5. Go to the WordPress dashboard to check for any messages or errors that may have been logged.
8. Upgrade Plugins: One of my favorite features of WordPress 2.5 is the automatic plugin upgrades. From the dashboard, click on Plugins on the right hand side beside Settings. If any of your plugins have upgrades available, you will see an Upgrade plugin link below them. If any of your plugins need an update, just click this link and let WordPress do the rest.
9. Check for any errors: At this stage your WordPress blog should be running and stable with version 2.5. Check your site for any coding errors that may pop-up if you have any code reliant on version 2.3 or earlier. In most cases there won’t be any errors as the template code has not changed very much, but if there are any, make notes and start Googling for answers.

One final note that is not a step but is equally important. Do this upgrade when your traffic is at a minimum. Go to your statistics program that you use and look to see what time of day your traffic is at a minimum. For my site it is between 4:00 am to 7:00 am. So ideally I would preform this upgrade at around 5:30 am and give myself a good hour to check for errors and downtime, before traffic starts picking up again. I hope this guide has you well on your way to WordPress 2.5. What do you think of WordPress 2.5? Was it everything you were hoping for? How would you change it?

Tags: blogging, cms, plugins, wordpress