Preparing Your WordPress For Upgrade

If you weren’t logged on to your computer that much over the weekend, you may have missed a notice on your WordPress administrative panel stating, A new version of WordPress is available! Please update now.

Yes, the long-awaited — even dreaded — WP v. 2.5 is out and I have some good news for you: WordPress and friends are offering a lot of hand-holding to see you through this update. Before I continue, I am offering special thanks to Deborah Petersen of the Life In The Fast Lane blog for forwarding some important material to me which I am sharing with you today. Thanks, Deb!

Download The Preflight Plugin

Before we proceed, I must tell you that I already upgraded my SEO blog on Sunday afternoon to WP 2.5. I had no problems whatsoever with the upgrade, completely everything within five minutes. Yep, it was that easy.

Still, if you have an older blog, particularly one with an older theme and a bunch of plug-ins, I recommend that you upload the WordPress Upgrade Preflight Check plugin before proceeding. This appropriately named plugin will examine your current theme and plugins for compatibility issues relating to upgrading to WP 2.3 (a modified version to help you upgrade to 2.5 will soon be released). Even though the plugin hasn’t been updated yet, I still found problems with an older theme blog that I know must be addressed. Once installed, click on the Options tab on your administrative panel and you’ll see the report.

BlogHerald Reports

BlogHerald’s Lorelle Von Fossen wrote an excellent primer in early March outlining what to expect with the update — read it, study it, and take your time doing your upgrade especially if you are concerned that problems could be lurking. Always, back up your database before upgrading and keep copies on hand. Do not rely on your web host’s copy even if they store them for you.

Lost Art of Blogging Reports

You can also find out detailed upgrade information by visiting Lost Art of Blogging and read what Tibu Puiu has to say about this update. I haven’t read it yet, but it is a very thorough review of WP 2.5.

You Can Wait On It

Although your administrative panel is telling you to update NOW, I don’t see any harm in waiting a few days, especially if you want to gauge the feedback which will soon be all over the internet. Mondays are the absolute worst days for me to do these types of updates as I’m gearing up for the week, needing to meet important writing deadlines. There are seven other WordPress blogs I must also update so you can see I’m not too eager to set aside my precious time to tackle them all at once.

Still, with one blog upgrade behind me, it wasn’t the crisis I had expected that it could be.  Kudos to everyone in WP-land for taking the sting out what amounts to a significant change in the way we use WordPress.

Back To The Trusty Theme

I’m loathe to switch themes these days, especially with WordPress 2.5′s release being imminent. Some of the themes associated with my many blogs are not likely to pass muster with the next update while others are tired-looking and could use a change.

However, If I were to make updates right now, I might have to quickly make another round of changes once WP 2.5 is online — I really don’t need that kind of extra work right now!

For long time readers of this blog, you’re familiar with the Aquarium theme now featured. I like this theme, but I have moved away from it a few times only to return.

My last theme exchange was necessary because a piece of code I inserted rendered the theme virtually unusable, but I fixed that problem and decided to ditch the most recent theme, Regulus, because one of my regular readers (who has a vision problem) had trouble with it.

When making changes to any theme, I must remember to take a look at how it looks with Internet Explorer as I use Firefox. In addition, I have computer screens with different resolutions and some themes look fine under all conditions, while others do not. I’ve had a rude awakening or two when I discovered a theme that didn’t look quite right with I.E., sometimes many days after installing it.

Usually, if there is a problem with a particular theme, I’ll get a “heads up” from a reader, but that isn’t always the case. Some day I hope to actually pay someone to develop a custom theme for this blog, but that’ll have to wait until after my first royalty check arrives.

Then again, I need to start writing a book!