4 things you should know to simplify your Wordpress Upgrade process

For the past few days i’ve seen various support topics at Wordpress.org support forums and it’s all thanks to the new release of Wordpress 2.3 that introduces new database schema changes (and that’s why most of the questions asked is related to the database error message)

While personally i do not have any problems when upgrading Wordpress, but i thought it’d be best to share these tips especially to those who want the easiest way to upgrade their wordpress installation even when you’re going to upgrade to another major version (such as from 2.0 to 2.1, 2.2 to 2.3, etc)

And here are the tips :

1. Know how to backup and restore your wordpress database by yourself and don’t depend to someone else to do it for you. Because if you know how backup and restoring your wordpress database you can always revert to your previous installation just in case the upgrade process failed. You can read Lorelle’s post about this process

2. The less plugins you’ve installed, the more easier for you to upgrade. While this is not really a big deal to those who know what they’re doing (read: tech savvy users), but for most people it’d be best for you to install plugin that you think best for you and you feel necessary to install that plugin. A good example of this is, i think most people know that back then Wordpress (before 2.3) doesn’t have the Tag features built-in into the Wordpress core, and in order to get that features most people use a plugin in order to satisfy their need to use tags on their blog … and the next thing that could happen to your blog is just like what Everton from Connected Internet just experienced on his test blog (but i’m sure that he can handle that problem later)

The most worrying aspect of my test WordPress 2.3 upgrade, was that my categories disappeared from my sidebar. Has anybody else had any upgrade problems? I think I’m definitely going to stay on 2.2 for a while, at least until the tagging functionality improves.

3. Use only simple themes, that doesn’t need to be upgraded even when you’re going to upgrade your wordpress installation. A good example of this is the Wordpress K2 Theme (i don’t mean any offense though). While K2 is a good theme, but i often read that many people keep having problem with it, from performance problems, or they just simply having issue when they just upgrade their Wordpress installation to another major upgrade

4. Always keep KISS Principle in mind ;)

Basically if you keep things simple, you don’t need to worry about anything when upgrading your Wordpress, so point #4 is the most important thing of all

Note : The above point is of course can be considered as not a big deal especially to the tech savvy users