I’m no expert on this but I did read the advice on the word press forums. Firstly they suggest you should back up all of your blog. Now if your server has a back up feature that would be great. But my server used to have a back up service and now no longer does, so I downloaded all my files via FTP to my hard disk. Takes ages.

There is a back up plugin available from word press.

I then uploaded the latest word press version 2.3.3 and followed the install instructions only to find that there were errors and there was nothing on my page. I forgot to upload a  theme, although there is always a default theme in word press.

So I went on a few forums and found out about this .htaccess file which you can’t access on FTP but you can on your server’s file manager. I didn’t delete this file the second time round, even though by then I had backed up my posts manually by copying and pasting.

I tried again. I deleted all my files, except .htaccess from my server’s file manager and it took a second rather than hours. I uploaded the new version of word press and although there were errors (I don’t know why) it worked. I uploaded the new compatible theme and all the posts were still there. No need to copy and paste every post.

But there was much to do. All the plugins disappeared. I uploaded those I wanted and some worked and some didn’t. My new theme has tags and I had to go back and add those in. Some images were still there but others weren’t and my ability to upload pictures had disappeared, so I tried uploading to wp-content/uploads. Still no success. I found out one has to make writable ‘wp-content’ and ‘uploads’ and then it worked. So I had to go back and upload my images.

My widgets were still there. Don’t ask my why.

My You tube video embeds had distorted the format again so I had to re-insert them. To do this I followed my own instructions

All the categories were still there too.

Now someone tells me that in a few days version 2.5 will be released from word press. This time though it will be much easier so I thought I’d share my experience.

The other thing to be mindful of is that although themes usually work on upgrades of word press, some plugins won’t. There is a bit of a lag between the developers of plugins and word press.

Any php file you have altered in the past will have to be redone, so I had to add my Feedflare code and my navigation code again.

If you had a better experience that can make it all a lot easier, it would be terrific to hear from you. Although my blog is working, I still do not understand why or what I should have done.