Safely upgrade your WordPress
I finally upgraded my WordPress to version 2.7!
I was reluctant to upgrade since the accident and I’d like to share a few things when upgrading your WordPress (WP) and I learned this the hard way. I’m sure that some people encountered bugs or some problems with their WP whenever they upgrade, it happened to me. Anyway, this is for those who don’t know how to safely upgrade their WordPress. There’s a way of knowing how to safely upgrade your WP and this is by upgrading your WP locally, which means on your own computer and not over your online WP site.
Note: This is for those who have their own WP installed in their host and not the one on wordpress.com since you need to access the database by using phpMyAdmin. You also have to have an access to your host’s ftp. This is going to take a lot of process but believe me it’s worth it (in my own opinion anyway).
This will be a little technical and I will try to explain almost everything. To be able to run your WP in your own computer, you need to have a virtual host (a PHP bundle as other call it). A PHP bundle is an application that can run Apache and MySQL on a Windows OS. There are some PHP Bundles that can be downloaded and installed with just a few clicks of a button; others Apache installers are too complicated. I prefer using the WampServer. It might take a few spaces in your computer but it’s worth it, if you really intend to test new versions of WP. Who knows? You might learn how to make themes for WP or a lot more.
Step 1
After downloading the WampServer, I recommend to not install it on your drive C if you have other drives that you can use for this, please do. I do this so that I can safely back up my files just in case my drive C crashes but then again, I can’t totally guarantee that my other drives are safe from crashing also.
Step 2
Create a folder (name it “wordpress”) inside your drive #:wampwww and download all of your WP files from your host via FTP. Back up your database and install the backup database on your local MySQL via phpMyAdmin. Create a new database using the same name from the one on your host. Click on the import tab and locate the backup database, then press Go. You will need to change some data from the backup in order to run your WP locally. Select the wp_otions on left navigation and then click on the Browse tab. Then edit the first row that has the “siteurl” variable on the option_name column. Change the variable of the option_value to http://localhost/wordpress. After editing that one click on the next and locate the “home” variable on the option_name column and change the variable of the option_value also to http://localhost/wordpress. If you don’t change this you will be accessing your online WP instead of the one in your computer. Once you’re done, access your http://localhost/wordpress and viola! You have your own WP running in your own computer.
Step 3
Follow the instruction on installing the new version to your local WP from WordPress.org. If you’ve successfully installed the new version onto your local WP then you can safely install the new version just by doing the same WordPress.org instruction on your online WP.