Recently I came across with the requirement of one of my client to upgrade his old WP 2.5 blog to latest WP 3.01, it was very straight forward and easy task. But the main concern was, that the blog was very old as we can get an idea of it by its version only, to secure all the posts and content in the database. This was not the first time I was workingon wordpress... but this was the first time when I was doing this type of version upgrading.
So before proceeding I did some webresearch on this and I got good tutorials from the web to make it happen.
So if you have a good old version of wordpress then there might be a possibility of not having the Upgrade feature as the part of WP dashboard.Generally in the current versions we can find the upgrade option under the Tools in dashboard and all can be done with the one click only.
Here are the instructions you should follow if you are upgrading your wordpress from older versions.
Before you do anything.
- Backup all wordpress files, mysql database.
- Note down the link structure of your wordpress blog.
- Note down the title tags because if you mess up, your ranking would suffer.
- Note down the database connection settings in wp-config.php
- Note down the rewrite rules in .htaccess file, if incase you have placed any.
Follow the instructions closely and since your blog will be down for 1-2 hrs so select a day or time when the traffic is very less on your website.
The following are the steps:
1. First Backup your wordpress folder and database. very important!
2. Disable all your active plugins.Its not necessary..as i didn't do it. But still it is recommended.
3. Delete your wp-admin, wp-includes folder.
4. DO NOT DELETE your wp-content folder and your mysql database. Just leave as it is.
5. Go to main wordpress folder, delete all the files including .htaccess and wp-config.php
wp-config.php —>make sure you note down the database connection information6. Download the latest version of wordpress,unpack it in your desktop.
.htaccess –> make sure you note down the extra rules you have placed.
7. Upload to your server by FTP only the wordpress wp-admin, wp-includes folders and all files in the wordpress folder.
8. Go to wordpress main folder rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php
- Setup correct database connection settings.
- Generate the secret keys (just copy and paste)
9. Point your browser to http://yourblog.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php. You will see the database upgrade option and proceed with it.
10. Go to wordpress > settings > permalinks click, select and save the permalinks you used before.
11. Activate all the plugins and your theme.
By now you should see your site loading nicely without any problems. If you encounter any other problems, please follow the wordpress manual upgrade page.
12. Double check your title tags in your site.
By following all these steps I made it happen. Thnaks to wordpress support as its Amazing..
Thanks,
Mayank
Coding is poetry.. it comes from heart :)
