»BLOG AROUND THE DOC«

If your site is hosted by a provider who doesn’t support the automatic upgrade of wordpress this might be helpful (I presume basic knowledge of installing wordpress, the unzipped files of the latest wordpress version should be already saved to your local drive):

1. Use your FTP client to backup all your folders and files to a local drive/folder. Even if your host doesn’t support the automatic update you can use the export function wordpress provides under “Tools” (which I haven’t tried yet). A MySQL-database backup is obligatory!
2. Disable all plugins.
3. Delete all files from every wp-folder – except such like wp-config.php, .htaccess (if you’re using permalinks) and in case you’ve created your own favicon you can leave the .ico file on the server, too. If you’ve created your own theme or modified an existing theme the sub-folder »themes« needs to be left on the server, too. The folder »wp-content« also contains your plugins and uploads. Make sure not to delete or overwrite these folders and files with the upgrade versions!
4. Search for your new (unzipped) wordpress files and start the upload of all files/folders you have deleted before. Make sure the upload path matches to the previously deleted folders/files.
5. Start the upgrade process (usually www.your-url/wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php). Follow the instructions (database update may be required).

Now you’re ready to reactivate your plugins again. NOTE: Some plugins (like podcasting or wordtube) could cause trouble! So if you’re receiving the following error

Fatal error: Call to a member function add_rewrite_tag() on a non-object in /…/…/…/…/wp-includes/taxonomy.php on line 289

DON’T PANIC!

Please go back to your ftp client and have a look at your plugin folder. If you haven’t done it yet backup all plugins to a local directory. Having done this– erase every plugin from the server. Now you should be able to log on to wordpress again. Upload your plugins one by one and check out each one if the error reappears (if so just delete it from the plugin folder again – possibly some plugins can’t be used until there’s an update available).

Hopefully your blog is upgraded successfully now.

The other way ’round: Downgrade

If you have experienced many problems with the latest wordpress version just like me (tried 3.0, demands up to 256MB RAM which makes everything quite slow plus wordtube didn’t work anymore) you can use the instructions above almost 1:1.

1. Save the actual MySQL-database (you probably don’t need to restore it but just in case…).
2. Disable your plugins, save them to your local drive(s) via ftp.
3. Delete all files from every wp-folders (except those files or/and folders as mentioned above, item 3!)
4. Replace files and folders with your backup folders/files (see first item of the upgrade instruction). Make sure the upload path matches to the previously deleted folders/files.
5. Go to www.your-url/wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php. Follow the instructions (database update may be required).

That’s it. Don’t forget to reactivate your plugins. Happy wordpressing again!