WordPress upgrades – beware beware beware!
My WordPress plugin auto-upgrade stopped working sometime around WordPress 2.7. Being of an indolent persuasion, I stopped bothering trying. Maybe it was the browser – but it didn’t work on either Firefox or Internet Explorer on Windows. And when it didn’t work after the upgrade to WordPress 2.8, I tried it on 64-bit Kubuntu. It didn’t work on Midori, Konqueror, Galeon, rekonq, Epiphany or Dooble either. And then came the upgrade to WordPress 2.9. Which is where it all went panic-inducingly wrong…
Most of the left-hand administration worked fine. But the dashboard fell over completely, which made me worry. Was the database irreperably corrupted? Was there a problem with my WordPress installation? Should I export the site as a WordPress XML file – and would it even export properly?
I usually upgrade WordPress by downloading the zip file, copying the entire file structure with FTPSync (which runs fine under wine), and then uploading the updated WordPress. I’d done this before, but didn’t want to re-install WordPress – and all the plugins – from scratch.
Turns out the answer was simple – disable all the plugins. Then upgrade all the ones that needed it. Then re-enable them. OK, I had to re-enter my WordPress API key to re-enable WordPress stats, but that took all of five minutes (fortunately I keep a list of API keys, serial numbers and so on, so it wasn’t a problem). And voila – everything working again! So if you’re having the same problem – give it a try. You never know…