PureBlogging

If you’ve taken a look at your Dashboard recently (and why haven’t you – it should be one of the first things you look at each day) you may have noticed a post from Wordpress.org’s Dev Blog concerning the release of Wordpres 2.2.1. This update features various patches to modules within the Wordpress system (ATOM, XML-RPC, and Widgets) as well as 3 security patches. It’s highly recommended you upgrade as soon as possible.

I’ve seen across numerous forums and blogs people expressing their dislike with the Wordpress upgrade process – some people really seem to have a problem upgrading and it’s usually because of their plugins – not Wordpress itself. Nonetheless, I’m going to walk you through the process of upgrading to Wordpress 2.2.1. This article assumes you are running Wordpress 2.2, but it shouldn’t make a difference.

• Head on over to Wordpress.org and download the Wordpress 2.2.1 archive (ZIP, TAR.GZ).
• Unpack the archive wherever you feel like, then delete the wp-content folder. If you are using the default theme, just delete everything else in that directory – this update includes an update to that theme. Better yet, switch to a decent theme that won’t make you immediately stand out as a splog.
• Now, head on over to your blog’s Plugins panel and write down all of the plugins you currently have activated. If every plugin on your server is activated, you can skip this step. Personally, I never do this and have yet to run into an issue.
• Upload the Wordpress 2.2.1 files to your server – overwriting any existing files.
• Head back over to your plugins menu and reactivate all of your necessary plugins
• Perform a quick test of your blog to ensure it’s still operational:
  • Refresh home page
  • View single post
  • Leave a comment
  • Search for a term
  • View an archive/category
  • Make a post
  • Delete the test post and comment
• Depending on the upgrade, you may be presented with a Wordpress Error window when you first refresh your home page. This is pretty normal and just means Wordpress needs to update your database. Wordpress has made it really easy for you – all you have to do is click the link. Note: This upgrade does not require a database update.

I just performed a quick upgrade on all of my blogs, without deactivating any plugins, and it worked fine. I don’t expect any plugin incompatibilities with this release of Wordpress, but I can personally confirm it works fine with the following:

• Akismet
• Author AdSense
• Batch Categories
• cForms
• Google Sitemaps
• Jerome’s Keywords
• Litebox Plugin
• Most Commented
• Recent Comments
• Related
• Simple Tagging
• Social Bookmarks Bar
• Subscribe2
• Trackbackers
• wp-Cache
• wp-Forum

Michael Wales is currently a Senior Airman in the United States Air Force awaiting a July promotion to Staff Sergeant. Michael also writes a blog at http://www.betaflow.com/ about Web 2.0 companies and new media.

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