I must admit, the first time I tried to run WordPress, I was confused.  The directions, to me, were confusing at the time so I just gave up on it.  Having come back to it recently to give it’s latest version a shot, the process flew with the breeze.  It was so easy to set up, configure, and mess with – I felt like I was five years old walking around Toys R Us, just playing with all the goodies.

Recently, they had an update from WordPress 2.6 to 2.6.1.  Being the relatively young web designer that I am, I have to stay up to date with my programs – so I upgraded.

I have to admit, upgrading things like this is scary.  I backed up all my posts, data, and my entire server to a local folder on my PC- JUST IN CASE something happens.  I use other open source programs like PHPBB; the first time I upgraded PHPBB, I went through hell trying to get things to function properly.  This, of course, was an error on my part – but one must learn from his mistakes and move on, which I indeed did.

Before I upgraded WordPress, I read the instructions on doing so.  Then, I backed up every file on my server, including all posts, pages, pictures, and data.  I even backed up things that I wasn’t using with WordPress, just to be safe (I’m quite the worry wart – which, in my opinoion, in this case, isn’t a bad thing.)

Crossing my fingers, I replaced every necessary file, which was some 500+ files.  I was extremely nervous.  It only took about a minute and a half to upload all the files, but to me, it was like watching a needle poke into my skin (sorry for the image.)  I was so nervous that something would go wrong and everything would be lost.

Thankfully, having gone the extra mile to back EVERYTHING up, and following the directions on the WordPress website, I deservingly had a successful upgrade.

Once finished, I decided to go and read up on the details of the upgrade.  As it turns out – the upgrade was very minor.  No real new features at all, in fact – they said if I’m happy with 2.6 to not bother running 2.6.1….boy do I feel stupid. 

Take it easy,
David Crandall