Upgrade? Don't Upgrade?
Yes, WordPress 3.0 is now available, but it may not be a good idea to upgrade to it just yet.
Here are 3 things you need to complete before you upgrade.
1) Do you really need to update now?
WordPress 3.0 is a big update and it’s been under construction for quite a while now. Yes it’s good, but sometimes there are security holes or bugs that the developers didn’t see in the testing environment. You never know what kinds of things people find until you release it. So it may be a good idea to wait a few days, or even a week or two, to ensure that no big issues get uncovered. Or, if they do come up, WordPress can fix them with a security update.
2.) Check your plugins
Just because a WordPress update is out, that doesn’t mean that all your plugins will work. There’s a chance that you’ll need to update a plugin to be compatible, or that the plugin just isn’t going to work until the developer updates it. Then you have to decide if you can live without certain plugins, or if you’d rather wait until all plugins are WordPress 3 compatible.
The good news here is that I haven’t been hearing any plugin issues, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.
3) Backup your blog
Before you upgrade, backup everything first. All your files, database, plugins, themes, everything. Just incase something goes wrong, you’ll want to be sure that you have a backup.
In reality, there is no reason to upgrade today. WordPress 2.9.x is still stable and secure and it’ll remain that way for a while. However, if you do want to upgrade, make sure that you have backups. Better safe than sorry.
Have you updated?
If so, what issues, if any, did you run into?
Thanks for this useful post. What are the best ways to back everything up, prior to the upgrade?
I’d use FTP to download all the files and use the WP-Bakcup plugin to grab the database.
I’ll recommend to wait for a few revision versions of wordpress, as 3.0 is a major update and it may have a few kinks.
I used the great WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin to upgrade with no issues. The process generates backups and includes several suggestions & opportunities to confirm that things like the backups are successfully downloaded to your system before proceeding.
It also turns off all active plugins prior to the upgrade and re-activates them once the upgrade is complete.
The full process took a couple minutes.
The plugin has worked exceptionally well for the past year and I highly recommend it.
I upgraded a site yesterday and had no issues at all. Fairly standard plugin set, WP Backup, Sociable, Pretty Link etc
Havent found any huge difference, but I gather it has much greater potential than the previous versions.
Glad to hear that there are very few issues. I’m hoping to upgrade BloggerDesign here in the next few days.
Excellent short post. I was excited to upgrade to WP 3. Now I am thinking deeply what Should I do?
I haven’t heard many issues, and the blogs I’ve upgraded seem to work fine. Double check with your plugins though to ensure they work with WordPress 3 and then upgrade if you feel you’re ready.
Glad to hear that there are very few issues. The full process took a couple minutes.