WordPress 2.7 introduced two very important features regarding Wordpress upgrades:
- Automatic Wordpress upgrade
- Automatic plugin installation and management from the WordPress admin interface
So after Wordpress 2.7, the upgrade process is easy and straightforward.
But what about the Wordpress versions before 2.7? Here is how to upgrade your Wordpress 2.6 to Wordpress 2.7, 2.8 or any other Wordpress version.
Steps:
- Backup your Wordpress installation:
- the Wordpress database (using WP-DBmanager plugin or WP-DB-backup plugin)
- the whole directory wp-content (download it using an FTP client)
- wp-config.php file
- (optional) just to be 100% sure, backup your whole Wordpress directory (download it using an FTP)
- Delete all the old Wordpress installation (the whole directory and all subdirectories). Do not delete the files and directories you created. Delete only WP files and directories (directories wp-content, wp-admin, wp-includes and (usually) all *.php files in the main directory. Do not delete the files like sitemap.xml, .ftpquota, .htaccess)
- Upload the new Wordpress files (which you downloaded previously from http://wordpress.org/download/)
- Copy saved wp-config.php to the Wordpress root directory.
- Run http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/update.php . This will ask for a database upgrade. If all goes well it will redirect to a blank page.
- Delete the whole new wp-content directory and upload there your old wp-content directory.
- You’re done. Test your site.
Incompatible plugins should be disabled automatically. You can now upgrade the plugins easily from the Wordpress admin interface. If you do not see the navigation menu, disable the menu plugins.
Note that if you uploaded images through WordPress before, you should backup and restore /wp-content/uploads/ directory too.
Now when you have upgraded to Wordpress 2.7 (or newer) you don’t need to follow this manual upgrade process every time a new version is released. You can now directly upgrade using the Wordpress admin interface.
