“Wordpress 2.8 upgrade”

1. On June 14th, 2009 at 8:09 am Roy Says:

   Question about that:

   What if doing the upgrade had failed and caused the site to go down?

   What sort of recovery plan should one have in that case?

   Because I have a couple sites I’d like to upgrade, but I have heard some people have had issues. Not sure how to create a quick “restore point” for a web site.

2. On June 14th, 2009 at 8:59 am matthew Says:

   Backup your entire site, including your mysql database. Download those backups to a different computer. Then, in a worst case scenario, you restore from the backup. This should be common practice anyway because you never know when/if a problem will arise on the server, with your web host, etc. Sometimes, stuff breaks for no reason.

   Here is what I do:
   http://matthewhelmke.net/2008/01/30/making-automatic-backups-for-your-website/
   http://matthewhelmke.net/2008/02/01/automatic-mysql-backups-using-php/

3. On June 16th, 2009 at 7:20 am Roy Says:

   Thanks!

   Do you know if the 2.8 upgrade process is “smart” in that it will retract itself if there’s a problem? I.e, does it have logic to undo the upgrade fully if it doesn’t succeed?

   Also, there are a LOT of older plugins that aren’t officially “OK” under 2.8. Should one go through every plugin and make sure it’s 2.8-safe first? (That could take days!)

   Thanks again!

4. On June 16th, 2009 at 9:26 am matthew Says:

   Sorry, I don’t have an answer for that. Your concerns are likely discussed in the documentation for each plugin you are using as well as the main WP 2.8 upgrade notes. If I were running a large site that generated income or was tied to a business, I would read everything first and take things slowly. As it is, mine is a personal site for my own pleasure, so sometimes I just jump in there…but I also know how to fix it when things go wrong, but wouldn’t want to have to on a commercial site where downtime equals money lost.

5. On June 19th, 2009 at 10:27 am Roy Says:

   Thanks Matthew.

   “My” site is actually my sister’s blog about her recent gastric bypass surgery, called “Necessary Mutilation” ( http://www.necessarymutilation.com ). It doesn’t generate any income to speak of (yet), but we’d sort of like it to. She’s a complete non-techie and I’m an old-time programmer trying to figure out how to provide value and still get income via the web. It’s a lot harder than drawing a paycheck, I’ll say that!