Preparing Your WordPress For Upgrade
If you weren’t logged on to your computer that much over the weekend, you may have missed a notice on your WordPress 
administrative panel stating, A new version of WordPress is available! Please update now.
Yes, the long-awaited — even dreaded — WP v. 2.5 is out and I have some good news for you: WordPress and friends are offering a lot of hand-holding to see you through this update. Before I continue, I am offering special thanks to Deborah Petersen of the Life In The Fast Lane blog for forwarding some important material to me which I am sharing with you today. Thanks, Deb!
Download The Preflight Plugin
Before we proceed, I must tell you that I already upgraded my SEO blog on Sunday afternoon to WP 2.5. I had no problems whatsoever with the upgrade, completely everything within five minutes. Yep, it was that easy.
Still, if you have an older blog, particularly one with an older theme and a bunch of plug-ins, I recommend that you upload the Wordpress Upgrade Preflight Check plugin before proceeding. This appropriately named plugin will examine your current theme and plugins for compatibility issues relating to upgrading to WP 2.3 (a modified version to help you upgrade to 2.5 will soon be released). Even though the plugin hasn’t been updated yet, I still found problems with an older theme blog that I know must be addressed. Once installed, click on the Options tab on your administrative panel and you’ll see the report.
BlogHerald Reports
BlogHerald’s Lorelle Von Fossen wrote an excellent primer in early March outlining what to expect with the update — read it, study it, and take your time doing your upgrade especially if you are concerned that problems could be lurking. Always, back up your database before upgrading and keep copies on hand. Do not rely on your web host’s copy even if they store them for you.
Lost Art of Blogging Reports
You can also find out detailed upgrade information by visiting Lost Art of Blogging and read what Tibu Puiu has to say about this update. I haven’t read it yet, but it is a very thorough review of WP 2.5.
You Can Wait On It
Although your administrative panel is telling you to update NOW, I don’t see any harm in waiting a few days, especially if you want to gauge the feedback which will soon be all over the internet. Mondays are the absolute worst days for me to do these types of updates as I’m gearing up for the week, needing to meet important writing deadlines. There are seven other WordPress blogs I must also update so you can see I’m not too eager to set aside my precious time to tackle them all at once.
Still, with one blog upgrade behind me, it wasn’t the crisis I had expected that it could be. Kudos to everyone in WP-land for taking the sting out what amounts to a significant change in the way we use WordPress.
thanks for the link to the pre-flight plugin, been looking for that all day. think im gonna wait a few days untill i update too, although i have tried 2.5 locally.
Thanks for the link and the plugins. Its good that we update our post from time to time. But its good that we wait for a couple of days till we get a good product.
I’m behind in my upgrades. I have so many blogs! I’ve actually slowly been upgrading all my blogs from 2.2 to 2.3.3 over the last week or so. 2.3.3. was a major upgrade in the database structure for Wordpress so for those who haven’t upgraded to that version they really need to be sure their plugins and themes are up to date and compatible before they upgrade to that version or the latest 2.5.
I’ll check out the plugin that you just mentioned.
Oh and if you and your readers don’t already have the WP_backup plugin it’s well worth downloading. It makes it really easy to backup your WP databases on your server and even get a regular email copy of your backup (you can even schedule regular backups). I definitely wouldn’t upgrade WP without doing some form of backup first.
Here’s the link to the plugin:
http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup
[...] reading some of the blogs I favor I came across an article about a new plugin that will help you prepare your Wordpress installation for an upgrade to version 2.3.3 and coming soon WP [...]
Hey dude,
Thanks for sharing this WordPress plug-in information.
And, indeed, Tricia has also given useful information about it.
Keep it up.
Thanks to both of you.