More than half of the local bloggers I know don’t have enough technical knowledge on how to upgrade their WordPress blogs. So, it’s a real pain and time-consuming task helping them out in upgrading them. If the server they are on happens to have Fantastico available, and it was used to install the blog, the upgrade could be a one-click pass. However, there will still be more left to do manually.
I was actually hoping that one day, Automattic or WordPress.org would have developed an extension or plugin that allows easy one-click upgrade to future versions of WordPress.
Then I saw this a couple days back — The InstantUpgrade plugin:
Fully automatic upgrades of your WordPress
Current version: 0.1
There’s no doubt about it: Upgrading is annoying. You must download the new version, unpack it, delete the old files, copy in the new files, run an upgrading routine.
Now for WordPress users, much of this is obsolete. The InstantUpgrade plugin provides is a easy and safe way to upgrade your WordPress automatically with a single click! (It is to say that it needs some preparations, though.) You can upgrade to the latest WordPress version, or you can upgrade to a version of your choice.
The installation instructions are a little complicated but once you’re done with it, all will be well in all future releases of WP. Read the instructions carefully before doing this and there’s no guarantee that all future upgrades will be 100% hassle free.
I still prefer upgrading my WP installation manually. Making sure that everything is really upgraded.
Sometimes Fantastico ain’t that up to date with regards to the version of WP you can auto-update to. Because of this I’ve been updating manually on my main site. Problem is once you’ve done that (and this could be my server specific) you can’t auto-update anymore.
The plug-in sounds great, but since there are no guarantees its always recommended (as is in any manual WP installation) to backup the mysql database first. There’s now a plug-in that does that as well.
I prefer doing the upgrade myself. Just like Markku said, it’s not that difficult especially if you have a good internet connection. You’ll be done in a few minutes. Besides, I enjoy doing the upgrades! :D
Upgrading per se isn’t really that hard, it’s just a matter of overwriting files through your favorite FTP client. But for most of us, it is a pain considering we typically have more than one WP install across our own little blog networks. ;)
and we’ll save time upgrading the engine.
Oh no … not another reason for me to succumb and start using WordPress … :P
Dreamhost has a one-click installer that does all the work for me. :) It even backs up the old site (but not the database, but I do that on a regular basis anyway).
upgrading? hehe :D
good thing there is already a plugin like this
upgrading sucks when you’re still using dial up internet connection :D
I never had troubles with upgrading before, and I do it manually. I just use CoreFTP to upload the files, it simply overwrites the old WP files except for the config file because it doesn’t come with the upgrade archive.
Weird thing is, Fantastico doesn’t seem to detect that I’ve already updated my WP installations and it insists on making the upgrade through it.
I actually love upgrading. It can’t be possibly easier than it is now!
/sarcasm off
lol
That would be good. I have accidentally deleted the config files on accident a few times myself when doing an upgrade. Good thing I had a backup.