My Secret to a Successful Wordpress Upgrade

April 8, 2008 | 2 Comments

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Just when I start to feel “techie”, something has to come along and blow my confidence. I’ve been starting to feel more and more technically savvy lately adding widgets here and code there. Understanding more html and css then ever before and reading the webmaster forums for tips and tricks and not feeling like I was dumped overboard in the middle of the ocean.

However, I have been putting off upgrading my Wordpress blogs because, well, I’m afraid of clicking one wrong button and taking the entire site down. When I worked in Corporate America, I didn’t have these fears, I would just call the IT department and someone would come along, laugh at my dumb mistake and have me up and running again by the time I got back with coffee.

Now, as a home based business, there is no support when something goes wrong. I can sound off to my three year old but he will offer little assistance and my husbands’ extent of computer knowledge is turning it on and that’s it. For this reason, I take my big risks with a bottle of wine to calm my anxiety.

With that said, my worst fear happened, I did it wrong and I took the entire site down. However, I survived, re-traced my steps, didn’t panic and actually fixed it myself within an hour.

For anyone that has not upgraded yet, I think I’m one of the last ones, but for your benefit I’ll tell you the secret I found to help the non-techie me, get the job done.

I started with reading all the Wordpress documents and watched a couple YouTube videos. However, it was hard finding directions that exactly matched my circumstances when it comes to hosting/cpanel/initial installation… and I just got more and more confused. Maybe overwhelmed is the better word. Well, I tried a couple different things, took my site down once or twice, then undid what I did to get it back up again.

After about 4 hours of this and in my desperation, I started my Google searches again and that’s when tada.. my moment of clarity showed and I found this website about an Artist…hmmm…Wordpress Upgrade…Artist…wasn’t sure I should trust this source… but desperation…

I read through all the directions and they were so straightforward and spoken in such a great tone, no techie garbage.. Let me tell you, this was my secret to getting both blogs switched over- no problem, and within a half an hour. Boom!

Thank you Leannes Upgrade Wordpress Post for such a simple set of instructions but one that helped me focus and get the project done. The SmartFTP was a great addition to my tools and made the transfer and upload of files easy.

Now that I have switched over, I have to say that I don’t think I’m all that crazy about the new admin interface. Maybe it’s just because it is so new that it will grow on me.

I like that I can modify my Permalink structure but I really don’t like that I can’t seem to bulk moderate comments like before. It looks easier to add various media content, so I’ll have to test that out in the near future.

One disappointment I had, was I created a huge list of sites for my “ping” list and I should have copied and saved it because that was deleted….I was so proud of that ping list….sadness… anyone want to share?

Overall, it will take me a few days of posting and playing to get everything tweaked to where I know it works again- bear with me