Watch your steps before you upgrade to Wordpress 2.1

I ran into issues while trying to upgrade a Wordpress 2.0.7 installation to the new Wordpress 2.1 release.

Wordpress 2.1 is a brand new package complete with more efficient database code, faster than previous versions, more Ajax. It is also bundled with the powerful anti-spam plugin for Wordpress - Akismet.

PRE-UPGRADE CHECKLIST

Let us be prepared before we upgrade from Wordpress 2.0.x to Wordpress 2.1.

Back-up your database.

It is an extremely easy task with Wordpress DB Backup. I think this was pre-packaged with the release of 2.0.5 or something close to that. However, this is done away with in the latest 2.1 Release.

Backup Wordpress files (mostly custom edited/added ones).

Personally, I prefer to keep uploads, images and other Wordpress non-related files outside of the Wordpress installation. This way, I don’t really worry about over-writing files or deleting the same by mistake.

De-activate all Plugins.

I think this is where my first upgraded stalled. So, de-activate your plugins.

UPGRADE

Now, the upgrade to Wordpress 2.1. Well, you can either do a clean upload or overwrite the WP files. In my case, I did an overwrite.

That should take care of the upgrade. But we are not done yet, there are few things we should take care of - the Post Upgrade steps.

POST-UPGRADE

All done, then you check out the new features.