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Upgrading WordPress

   February 12th, 2011

Wordpress logoI'm upgrading my WordPress installation this weekend, going from way-out-of-date v2.5 all the way up to v3.0.5.

So far so good - a few glitches, but nothing major.

I know commenting is a little different, but if you notice anything out of the ordinary, please let me know.

Updates
I'll post the bigger problems I'm having here, and then solutions as I find them (but I am also open to suggestions if someone else has encountered these):

  • WordPress won't accept my FTP credentials - this is annoying, and it is preventing me from updating any of my plugins
  • Save Draft button isn't working - these are a few interrelated issues here: it seems like something is wrong with the permalinks, which is preventing me from previewing draft posts. Draft posts are also not saving to the list of draft posts, which means I can't save anything in advance

Update 3/8/11:
It looks like this is finally resolved. The root cause was two-fold, I think

  1. I hadn't been keeping up with regular upgrades (it had been years)
  2. The underlying database was corrupt, and wasn't allowing me access to everything I needed access to

Even before I upgraded, the access problem existed - it only became noticeable after such a huge upgrade jump, because WordPress had changed how it accessed the database, and now the parts I couldn't access were more critical than before.

The ultimate fix was to scrap the old install completely and start over with a fresh install - new WordPress, new database, everything. I exported all my posts and other content, got my theme set, and then my host essentially redirected my domain to point to the new directory.

A pain in the butt, basically, that could have been avoided long ago if I had been upgrading properly.

Thanks to Otto from WordPress for all his troubleshooting help, and to Chris of thevale.net for fixing everything I couldn't.




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3 Responses to “Upgrading WordPress”

  1. Brian Herzog Says:

    test comment (it’s working, then it’s not working, then it’s working, then it’s not working…)

  2. Blake Says:

    “WordPress won’t accept my FTP credentials ” Maybe you fixed that by now, but if you change up the permissions so the web server user can write to your WP files it won’t ask.

  3. Brian Herzog Says:

    @Blake: thanks for the suggestion. It seems like there are a couple things going on, and permissions was one of them. Another seems to be my database account didn’t have enough permission to do some of the alter and create commands I needed to update properly, so those parts just didn’t get done. Thankfully for me, my host and Otto from WordPress are on the job.