upgrading wordpress to latest version - a cautionary tale

Having put it off long enough, I have just upgraded my wordpress installation from the legacy 2.0.11 (which was stable and officially supported until very recently) to 2.8.4. What prompted this? The following on the wordpress website:

Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. This particular worm [...] makes itself an admin, then uses JavaScript to hide itself when you look at users page, attempts to clean up after itself, then goes quiet so you never notice while it inserts hidden spam and malware into your old posts. [...] Upgrading is a known quantity of work [...] Fixing a hacked blog, on the other hand, is quite hard. Upgrading is taking your vitamins; fixing a hack is open heart surgery. (This is true of cost, as well.)

2.8.4, the current version of WordPress, is immune to this worm. (So was the release before this one.) If you've been thinking about upgrading but haven't gotten around to it yet, now would be a really good time.

- excerpt from http://wordpress.org/development/2009/09/keep-wordpress-secure/

I did the upgrade to 2.8.4 in one fell swoop by following the steps in the wordpress codex. There appeared to be only a few glitches that were relatively quickly ironed out and everything seemed to be running fine.

Until I noticed several stray Âs in some of the older posts. And ûs instead of üs, és instead of és, âs instead of âs, etc. etc. It turns out that I SHOULD have disregarded the detailed instructions and googled to find others' recommendations about upgrading the Legacy Wordpress. Thank goodness for backups!! (Please read more about my wordpress upgrade woes. )

When you are upgrading your older version of wordpress (don't put it off!!), take a look Pixelita Designs; they put together a handy (if only I'd seen it!!) step by step guide:

1. Backup your database! If you have the WP Backup plugin, just use that to capture the latest MySQL dump. Otherwise, go through your web host's control panel and PHPAdmin to export the *.sql file to your hard drive.

[...]

4. Chart your upgrade path. Since you are upgrading from 2.0.11, you should upgrade incrementally, like this: 2.0.11 > 2.1 > 2.2 > 2.3 > 2.5 > 2.6 > 2.7 > [2.8.4]
5. Make sure you have downloaded and unzipped to folders all of the WP versions you'll need to complete your upgrade. You can find them in the download archive.
6. Using your favorite FTP program, upload WordPress, starting with 2.1, from the folder you downloaded and unzipped. DO NOT UPLOAD any .htaccess or wp-config.php files from any of the distros! You will want to retain your own versions of .htaccess and wp-config.php already on your server.
7. Once the first new version is uploaded, point your browser to the /wp-admin folder and upgrade.php. For example, if your WordPress install is at www.yourserver.com, you would go to: http://www.yourserver.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php.
8. Proceed to upgrade the database when prompted.
9. Repeat steps 6, 7, and 8 above (uploading the incremental versions, invoking upgrade.php and updating the database) until you've upgraded all the way to [the most recent] WordPress

- excerpt from http://blog.pixelita.com/78/upgrading-your-legacy-wordpress-site/

Obviously, if you are upgrading from Wordpress 2.2, you would upgrade 2.2 > 2.3 > 2.5 > 2.6 > 2.7 > 2.8.4 And please remember to start with making a full backup of your wordpress!!

Also, while you are doing the upgrade, you can upload a temporary index file to your wordpress folder. Make a page that looks like your site and put something like "server currently undergoing maintenance - please come back later" on the page. Save it as index.html and upload it to your wordpress folder. Once the upgrade is done, you can remove that temporary index file and get back to blogging.

All wordpress releases are here: http://wordpress.org/download/release-archive/

Hope this helps.


This post was written by Elizabeth from blog from OUR kitchen

Switching from Blogger to Wordpress?

So, I started my blog on Blogger a few months ago and I think it's growing steadily. I think that I eventually want to move to my own domain name and publish on Wordpress, rather than using the blogger website and having the ".blogspot.com" address. So, a few questions:

1. Am I right that in the long run, I'll do better with my own domain and wordpress rather than using blogger? i.e., am I just putting off the inevitable if I continue to use the blogger platform for a few months? I am decent at understanding/writing html, so I've been able to customize the blogger site to some extent, but I want to be able to have separate pages for a recipe index, blogroll, etc!

2. Am I better making the switch now, when my blog is still new, rather than when it's been around for a while and I'll be disrupting a larger number of readers (hopefully!)?

3. Am I going to lose readers if I make the switch, or is it pretty seamless?


This Post was written by Katy from sugarlaw.

[WordPress] Upgrading from 2.0x to 2.1/2.2

I've been putting this off for several months since hearing about some of the calamities bloggers experienced when upgrading to 2.1, but now that 2.2 is coming I think it's probably time to upgrade. I've upgraded the rest of our blogs, but I'm dreading doing the food blog since it's the largest and has the most categories.

I remember a post back in January in which some of us discussed the messes that occurred during upgrades, and I was wondering if anyone else had recently attempted or reattempted and how it went.

This Post was written by ANDREA from ANDREA'S RECIPES.

[Tech + Spam] Captcha + alternatives

Hi all,

We're publishing using WordPress, and we've had great success with Akismet for spam-comment filtering. But a handful of spam comments slip through each day, and I worry about the implications of having close to 60,000 comments in our database (even though 99.9% of them are tagged as spam). At this rate/capacity I fear we're taxing the limits of what WordPress was designed to handle.

I've shied away from Captcha and other verification methods in the past, because I don't want to put up any barriers for our readers to comment. But I'm sick to death of dealing with the spam comments, and I realize more and more that nearly every site where I comment has some form of user validation in place. Maybe my readers won't balk as much as I fear?

I'd love to hear from any of you who've added Captcha to your site about how it affected your (legitimate) comment rates. And also, any Captcha alternatives that you've used and liked -- I know I've seen sites that ask commenters to enter a simple check-phrase, but I can't seem to remember where.

Thanks!
~A


This Post was written by Anita from Married... with Dinner

[Wordpress] 2.1 migration issues

If anyone's considering migrating to 2.1, FYI the upgrade totally barfed on our site. We can’t upload photos using the editor, nor attach links. Even more amusingly, the misbehavior is totally different on IE vs Firefox. (And Cameron says that the support forums are filled with finger-pointing and denial. Sweet.)

Since hand-coding really sucks, we’re rolling back to 2.0.7 tonight and then manually reposting today’s post and about a dozen comments. Fun...

(And here I was, all worried about my non-food blog and the New Blogger migration, which went off flawlessly.)

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This post was written by Anita from Married... with Dinner