I have fourteen (14) WordPress sites that need to be upgraded to the latest level. They are old enough that the automatic built-in upgrading doesn’t work, so the procedure is:
Step 1: Take a Backup
Use phpMyAdmin in cPanel to take a backup of your database. All your posts and Pages are held in the database, so you will need to have a copy of it in case, for whatever reason, you change your mind after upgrading and need to go back. If you are not sure how to backup your database, then complete instructions can be found in the WordPress Backups section of the Codex.
Step 2: Disable Plugins
The final preperation step is to disable plugins. Every now and again a plugin hasn’t been updated to work with the latest version of WordPress, and causes a problem after the upgrade. So, it’s best to try and avoid that. You can easily disable your plugins by heading to the Manage Plugins page in the Dashboard, changing the “Bulk Actions” pull down menu to “Deactivate” and clicking “Apply”.
Now that you’ve turned off your plugins and you’ve got your backup, it’s time to get started.
Step 3: Replace WordPress files
1. Get the latest WordPress zip (or tar.gz) file.
2. Unpack the zip file that you downloaded.
3. Delete the old wp-includes and wp-admin directories on your web host (through your FTP or shell access).
4. Using FTP or your shell access, upload the new WordPress files to your web host, overwriting old files.
NOTE – you should replace all the old WordPress files with the new ones, including those in the root directory like index.php, wp-login.php and so on. Simply copying the contents of the zip you downloaded over the top of your existing files should achieve this. Make sure you copy all the sub-directories as well. Don’t worry – your wp-config.php will be safe.
[B]Be careful when you come to copying the wp-content directory. You should make sure that you only copy the files from this directory, rather than replacing your existing wp-content directory. This is where your themes and plugins live, so you will want to keep them. [/B]
Lastly you should take a look at the wp-config-sample.php file, to see if any new settings have been introduced that you might want to add to your own wp-config.php.
Step 3.5: Remove .maintenance file
If you’re upgrading manually after a failed auto-upgrade, delete the file .maintenance from your WordPress directory using FTP. This will remove the “failed update” nag message.
Step 4: Update your installation
Visit your main WordPress admin page at /wp-admin. You may be asked to login again. If a database upgrade is necessary at this point, WordPress will detect it and give you a link to a URL like http://example.com/wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php. Follow that link and follow the instructions. This will update your database to be compatible with the latest code. You should do this as soon as possible after step 1.
Step 5: Clear the cache
If you have caching enabled, your changes will appear to users more immediately if you clear the cache at this point (and if you don’t, you may get confused when you see the old version number in page footers when you check to see if the upgrade worked).
Your WordPress installation is successfully updated. That’s as simple as we can make it without Updating WordPress Using Subversion.
Step 6: Enable & test (& replace if needed) the plugins
Go in and enable your Plugins again. If you have issues with logging in, try clearing cookies in your browser.
Make sure the site seems to be behaving normally, with all plugins functioning.
If any of the plugins that were active before do not work with the current WP, see if there’s a good replacement to do the same thing.
Step 7: Troubleshooting
If anything has gone wrong, then the first thing to do is go through all the steps in our extended upgrade instructions. That page also has information about some of the most common problems we see.
If you experience problems after the upgrade, you can always restore your backup and replace the files with ones from your previous version from the release archive.
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The websites that need upgrading are:
Lchaim.us
MissouriLandmarks.com
CottonDuvets.com
ExtremeBaking.com
SuperChef.org
SuperSurfing.com
StuntBikes.us
WIFIjammers.com
WorkerPermit.us
AnimalTechnology.com
GuamCasinos.com
KipsBay.info
AnswerMan.us
HobbyPals.com
Thanks for your attention.
