Bugger!

There is yet another update floating around today.

Why the hell can’t these people get their act together and produce something that works first time?

Can you imagine a world where every now and again you have to return all your books to the publishers, so that they can be updated?  Or you have to return all your underwear to the shop every month because the stitching isn’t safe?

Anyway…..

The new version of WordPress is out.

If any of you run your own sites, then upgrading is very easy.  I suppose that’s something to be grateful for?

I just did a trial run on Herself’s site.  She doesn’t use it any more so it’s a great place to see if it goes down in flames.

The first thing I did was to download the new version 2.6 from WordPress.org.  It’s amazing how many people overlook that step when upgrading.

Next, I connected to her site, and backed up everything.  They say you are supposed to do that in case anything goes wrong.  Who are these wimps?  Don’t they like living dangerously?

Then I deleted most of the files on her server.  This is the tricky bit, because if you delete the wrong ones, you are fucked royally.

The rule I use is to delete everything beginning with ‘wp-‘ EXCEPT ‘wp-config.php’ and the folder ‘wp-content‘.  If you delete the former, you are really up shit creek without a paddle, because you will have lost the way into your database, and unless you are very clever, you will have to reinstall the whole damned thing.  Than means you will have lost all your posts and everything else too.  If you delete ‘wp-content’ it isn’t quite so disastrous, but you will have lost your theme, your images and all your plug-ins.

Anyway, having deleted the files, I then uploaded the new version.  All of it.  It asked me if I wanted to overwrite ‘wp-config’ and I let it’.  It only overwrite files that are already there, and that means that themes and plug-ins are untouched.

The last thing I did was to run ‘/wp-admin/upgrade.php’ by typing into the address after grannylosttheplot.com.  It muttered a couple of warnings but I just told it to upgrade, and it did.

I then checked the site.

The fucking thing looked exactly the same.  I hoped there would be some improvements, like better content, or that it would appear in three dimensions, but I saw no difference.  They say that all the improvements are visible in the Admin area, but I haven’t got time to play with her Admin.  There is a page that explains it all, and I’m not going to repeat it.  If you want to see the new features, just head over to here.

I may update this site later, so if you visit and find a pile of scorched rubble, you’ll know I didn’t follow my own instructions.

But I like living dangerously.