Comments on: WordPress upgrade nightmare and lessons learned

By: Andres

Andres — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:57:02 +0000

All my categories from all my blogs dissapeared and I have done nothing that could explain that. All are different versions and different themes.
Maybe phpmyAdmin was down and caused the problem. Don’t know. Wordpress sucks! it is a nightmare.

By: Jacques

Jacques — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 08:35:23 +0000

The constant upgrading of WP was one of my main ‘issues’: one site is ok, 2 sites become a pain, but if you have several (client) sites that need to be upgraded (because of some security fix) once every 2 or 3 weeks, it certainly becomes an issue – after the upgrade you have to test each site for broken plugins etc. (anyone a procedure for that – please let me know!).We recently started using Zirona Instant Upgrade: http://www.zirona.com/software/wordpress-instant-upgrade/ – and so far, it works great. Only hassle so far is the Chmod-ding of directories and files and not being sure if it leaves your site unsecure after upgrading (we have to test this) – but it is in beta, so they might built-in\tighten security – so, keep an eye on it, as it is a true timesaver.Plugins are regularly updated too – but browsing the author’s site, checking versionnumbers….. This one comes to the rescue: Pluginstaller: henning.imaginemore.de/pluginstaller/. It detects older plugin-versions on your site, from where you can upgrade them. It did work almost perfect – one suggestion (I didn’t contact the author yet): once the plugin is upgraded, it is deactivated, so you have to re-activate it manually – thing is, it doesn’t indicate which plugin you just upgraded: so, you have to remember it, as it disappears from the active-plugin list, scrolling down to the inactive plugins – depending on the number of inactive plugins, it is not always easy to find it – a mark for newly upgraded plugins would make our lives even easier.Anyway, long post – maybe WPG could write a review on them, with user-experiences?

By: Miriam Schwab

Miriam Schwab — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:52:06 +0000

Hi Austin – don’t get me wrong – WP-DB-Backup is an amazing plugin and is a lifesaver. I use it on other sites and it works great. I just didn’t realize that it wasn’t working here, and I should have upgraded to the new version of the plugin a long time ago. Lesson learned, and now I hope I’ll keep on top of upgrading everything.

By: Austin

Austin — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 03:26:35 +0000

Hello Miriam,

I’m sorry to hear about your backup troubles. Just so you know, the bug in WP-DB-Backup causing the email problems has been fixed for several months, so you should upgrade to the latest version.

By: Miriam Schwab

Miriam Schwab — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:12:04 +0000

Lynne – I’m so glad you like this site so much!

Are you using widgets in your sidebar? If so, there is a blogroll widget that you just move into your sidebar. If not, you need to put a snippet of code into the sidebar: < ?php wp_list_bookmarks(''); ?>. See more info on this template tag here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/wp_list_bookmarks

By: Lynne

Lynne — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:35:49 +0000

Thank goodness you were able to finally get it back! This is one of my favorite sites, full of great WP information.
I upgraded both my blogs last week and thankfully, there was someone with a very good knowledge of this process, standing by for assistance. He was able to get my site up and running again after using a backup file from Bluehost. This is not something I want to deal with very often and hope WP isn’t going to upgrade too often.
I still can’t get my blogroll in my sidebar to appear, even though all of the links are in my admin blogroll panel. I think it’s a case of how knowing code would be helpful!

By: Miriam Schwab

Miriam Schwab — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 15:25:36 +0000

Thanks John. I would have been so upset if the whole site would have been gone, after all my work on it! To say that it would have sucked is putting it mildly.

By: John Kolbert

John Kolbert — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 14:54:29 +0000

Wow, what a mess! I’m glad you finally got it figured out! It would have been a tragedy to see the end of WordPress Garage. Thanks for the excellent tips. You’ve inspired me to backup my database much more often.