While Adam may enjoy poking fun at my reluctance to simply “dive in” and upgrade my WordPress install it seems that I may be proven correct 🙂
Looking at the WP testers list today there are a number of people who’ve run into issues.
While an upgrade may work fine for someone using a standard install with a fairly standard theme and plugins, there is no guarantee that it won’t break it completely.
I did upgrade one of my smaller blogs earlier today without running into any major issues, but as it only uses one or two of the simpler and more popular plugins I wasn’t really expecting any issues.
So what do you do if you break your blog completely?
Well, first of all you should ensure that you have a backup of the original database. If you don’t restoring the original is going to be very awkward (though probably not impossible)
Fortunately ther are tutorials online for people who don’t feel comfortable with MySQL imports 🙂
Why am I so cautious?
Experience has taught me that it’s the only sane way to proceed with software 🙂
No matter how good the developers are they can never quite account for all the possible issues, even when the issues are caused by the users themselves.
Someone like Adam may have the necessary experience and skill to fix a broken upgrade, but a lot of WordPress users simply don’t.
Michele Neylon :: Pensieri
Technology, Marketing, Domains, Thoughts
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The upgrade managed to break my favored theme. Malformed mysql query 🙁
I presume you were able to fix it?
Huh, I’ll hope you’re not trying to suggest that my WordPress install is standard. I’ll have you know that it’s hacked to bejaysus, including custom hacks by yours truly! 😉
But yes, you should always take a backup of your database before you upgrade, either at the command line, via a third party utility like phpMyAdmin, or using the WP-Backup plugin that was curiously included in 2.0, and unincluded in 2.1.
I find that the best approach is to disable all plugins, revert the theme to default, take a backup of the database into the current directory, then move the whole thing somewhere else on the server, reintegrating plugins and themes into the new install.
But then I’m not a wuss. Heh.
Adam
Yes, but I think you’re intentionally missing my point.
A lot of people have been blogging about upgrading to the latest release as if it were “easy peasy”.
Even moving a blog from one host to another can be a traumatic experience for a non-technical user, so I’m merely trying to point out that while those of us who are vaguely technical might not encounter issues (Niall is an obvious exception!) others definitely will if they haven’t thought it out properly.
Michele
PS: You’re a tree hugger!
Michele: Working on the fix as I type 🙂
Adam: Backing up the Database is for wusses! Admittedly I don’t have much to lose!
I’m not intentionally missing your point Michele, I’m just being difficult. Us tree huggers are like that.
You’re right about that Niall. And I have even less to lose, since my site is effectively an online version of me: a vast pile of useless information!
Michele: Nice one character fix, and patch sent to the author.
Adam: I’ve seen worse piles of useless information 🙂
Broke my theme, fixed my theme, broke the backend, fixed that up, broke my theme again, kinda fixed it up, everything seems to be grand and dandy again. Really like the new backend features I have to say.
Are you talking about me or the blog now Niall? 🙂
Adam: Bit from Column A and bit from Column B :p
Cat fight!!
/me gets some popcorn
Cats? Where?