In times where companies are spending millions on security to keep their data protected from all the shameless hackers out there, it is probably more important than ever to keep your software up-to-date. Even though I only run this small blog, I think it is important to stick to these upgrading habits. Back in June this year I read on Dave’s blog what had happened to him and this illustrated clearly to me how important security, backups and updates are these days. So I decided to upgrade WordPress to the latest version.
I don’t know how you feel about that, but I am always kinda hesitating when a new update/patch is due to be installed. Especially when there were no problems so far and everything runs smoothly. But on the other hand, you never know what kind of security threat might come up tomorrow. Every time such an update is due, I ask myself:
- What if something breaks during the update process?
- What if something that I have installed (WP Plugins) will not work anymore after the update?
If worse comes to worse, a task that seems simple, might become a nightmare when you realise that upgrading is not as simple as pushing a button…
Thankfully, WordPress is - I have to say it - a great piece of blogging software. I started this blog in February with version 2.0.6 and had no problems so far. The latest version, as of this writing, is 2.2.1, so I went to the WordPress homepage and downloaded the zip-archive.
First, I upgraded my local development version using their Upgrading Wordpress Guide. This gives you everything you need. It consists of a short version (How to upgrade in five steps) and a more detailed version. I followed this guide and had no problem. After that, I upgraded my live environment using exactly the same procedure, and again - no problem. I had to make some minor tweakings to my header and sidebar template (because some rendering functions at the backend have changed slightly), but both issues were fixed within 15 minutes. So all in all a quite successfull upgrade session :-).
Probably the most important thing is: make backups of everything before starting any kind of update procedure. This can save you a lot of trouble. Old advice, I know, but so true.