It is always a pain to upgrade WordPress to the latest version. Fortunately there are some great plugins to help you out big times!

Before you start any upgrade don’t forget to backup, backup, backup! Save your files local and use the great plugin WP-DBManager by GaMerZ

Then download and activate Wordpress Upgrade Preflight Check. It checks all your plugins you use, if it may have compatibility problems with the newest WordPress or not. If you get an error message for a specific plugin, please contact the author of the plugin directly to make sure if it’s working in the newest WordPress Version. Or just deactivate the plugin if it’s not really important for you website.

Doug, the author of the plugin was telling me at the WordCamp Dallas, that he is working on a new version, which should come out the next few days.

Another good resource is the incompatibility plugin list on WordPress 2.5, but some of the plugins in this list are already updated since many plugin authors working fast to fix it for WordPress 2.5.

After you checked all your plugins, you should use “The Instant Upgrade plugin for WordPress” by Alex Günsche. Install and activate the plugin, deactivate all your other plugins. Run Intstant Upgrade and after just some clicks and connecting to your ftp server, it automatically upgrades your WordPress in about a minute or less. You don’t have to do anything. Just lean back

There is also another plugin out there, “Wordpress Automatic Upgrade“, but it looks like some people have major problems with it. It has some more features as the “Instant Upgrade” plugin, like automatically deactivating and activating plugins and backup the files automatically. But especially recently, people had a complete disaster with this plugin and the author unfortunately is not very responsive lately.

Just FYI, when I did the upgrade, my website was blank for about a minute or two. Don’t panic! It just does the work until everything is running fine again.

Also don’t use any of these plugins when you installed WordPress via Fantastico.

Have fun upgrading your WordPress Website, it’s worth it!

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