Fantastico has now been set up to allow upgrades and installations of WordPress 2.2. So I took the plunge and upgraded almost all of the sites that I manage. Each site took about five minutes, and so far I haven’t noticed any problems.

I want to take this opportunity to laud the praises of Fantastico, and recommend that you choose your hosting based on whether they offer Fantastico or not. Installation with Fantastico takes about five minutes, as opposed to having to upload the entire WordPress directory via FTP on hosting providers that don’t offer Fantastico, a process which can take almost an hour if your FTP connection fails too many times. Especially if you are running a WordPress site, Fantastico can make your life a lot easier since new versions of WordPress are released relatively frequently.

Upgrading with Fantastico is also really simple, and involves the following steps:

  1. Backup your WordPress files. I use WordPress’ export feature, which is available under Manage, and I use the WordPress Database Backup plugin from Il Filosofo and save the backup file.
  2. Deactivate all plugins. A little tedious, but not too complicated or time-consuming.
  3. Log into your cPanel. Click on Fantastico. Click on WordPress in left-hand column. Click on upgrade next to the relevant installation.
  4. You will receive a warning before the upgrade takes place. Click upgrade and in a few seconds the upgrade is complete.
  5. Log in to your WordPress site. Re-activate all the plugins.
  6. Take a look around and make sure things are ok.

That’s it! So now WordPressGarage is running on WordPress 2.2. If you see anything weird, please let me know.

For more information on Fantastico: