Today, I came across a link to the WordPress download announcing version 3.0.5 via OraNA. In addition, I saw this banner on top of my admin site:
So, I guess the time has come for performing my first upgrade!
I found this Tutorial on performing an upgrade. So, here is what I am going through to do the upgrade.
Requirements
First, step is to check the requirements. According to the requirements page, I need at least version 4.3 of PHP. I checked on the admin page of my website, and it lists version 5.2.14.
Also, the requirements list the need for MySQL 4.1.2 or greater. For, this version, I opened phpMyAdmin and found the version on the right side of the home page. I am good with version 5.0.87.
Backup
For the backup, I used phpMyAdmin. I went to the Export tab, and I clicked the Select All to backup all the databases.
I chose to zip the export to save download time and size:
Plugins
First, I found some of the plugins had upgrades available.
I love the upgrade process. Wordpress has really made this simple:
Finally, I clicked the Deactivate link on each of the plugins.
Updating
I am going with the automatic method. So, I just need to click on the “Please Update Now” link at the top.
Then, I clicked the Update Automatically button:
And the upgrade appears to have gone without a hitch:
Then, not to forget, I had to re-activate the plugins:
One of my concerns was that deactivating the plugins would loose some of my settings. For example, I have an AddToAny Subscribe button as one of the widgets. Thankfully, I found that Widget was still in place, and I didn’t have to reconfigure any of the plugins or anything.
Conclusion
All in all, this was an awesome experience. This was very easy for such an upgrade. Thank you to all of the developers who make this possible!