Upgrading Wordpress 1.5 to Wordpress 2.1

When I built HomeWithAndrew.com, I used Wordpress 1.5, which was easy to install and very easy to use. However, one of the biggest drawbacks to having a Wordpress blog - or any other blog for that matter - where you allow comments from you visitors is SPAM. Up to ninety five percent of the comments I received would be SPAM - automatically generated comments with embedded URLs to one spam site or another. It became such a bother moderating these comments that I started looking to block automatic comments. I thought of 2 possible solutions :

• Install a Captcha word verification field so I could be sure only real, live humans were typing and submitting comments. I could find a simple enough script to do this.
• Use a third party service to block spam comments.

In the meantime, I didn’t want to open my mailbox and look at spam anymore, so I just turned off the comments for all posts. Then I discovered Akismet, a service which blocks spam comments. I downloaded it only to find that I couldn’t install it because it required Wordpress 2.0 or higher. Oh bother. I had other more serious things on my mind so I turned on my super-duper-subconscious-brain-problem-solver switch and left it to work out the problem.

Some weeks later and many web searches later, I found out that that the Akismet plugin was already included in Wordpress 2.1. So technically, all I had to do was to upgrade to Wordpress 2.1 and I would have the Akismet plugin running. The problem was, the Wordpress 2.1 upgrade wasn’t just a simple double-click and Wordpress would automatically overwrite the older version. There was a fair bit of user (me) involvement that was required.

Here’s the overview of the upgrade process from Wordpress’ site :

Now I think I’m fairly okay with technical stuff, but there are many files that work behind the scenes of a Wordpress blog. I was game though, so as I worked through the steps to upgrade to Wordpress 2.1, one step stumped me : Instruction No 7.

The thing here is, Wordpress’ instructions never stated whether you were supposed to OVERWRITE the files on your local computer, before you uploaded them or to create a totally new folder. I thought if I did overwrite the old files, I would lose all my original settings if the upgrade didn’t work. What really bothered me was that if the upgrading process required so many user actions, then what would the reversal be like?!

In any case, here’s what I finally did :

1. I backed up all the files mentioned in the instructions.
2. Downloaded Wordpress ver 2.1
3. Created a new folder in my computer called HomeWithAndrewUpgrade
4. Unzipped all the contents of Wordpress ver 2.0 into this folder
5. I use Dreamweaver as my default FTP client, so I duplicated my the site definition for HomeWithAndrew and renamed this site definition as HomeWithAndrewUpgrade. So in effect, I had 2 local folders pointing (uploading) to HomeWithAndrew.com.
6. Now, I uploaded all the required files from my HomeWithAndrewUpgrade folder to the server.

Then with bated breath, I tried to view my Home Page. Horrors of horrors! Blank page! Nothing to view… nadda… zilch…. zero! Okay, okay, don’t panic… I back tracked.

There was ONE thing I did not do ON PURPOSE - delete the original folders in the remote site. After I deleted these folders and uploaded everything again, SUCCESS! HomeWithAndrew.com was up and running on Wordpress 2.1!

Now, remember I had 2 local versions of Wordpress in my computer? I needed to keep the contents in the OLD wp_content folder because I had made numerous modifications to create my 3 column Almost Spring theme. So, to wrap things up :

1. Copy the ORIGINAL (old) content from the wp_content/plugins and wp_content/themes folders into the NEW wp_content/plugins and wp_content/themes folders.
2. Delete or rename the old Wordpress folder in your local computer. I chose to rename it so that I have all the files on hand in case I needed a file from Wordpress 1.5. I recommend that you do likewise.
3. Now rename the NEW Wordpress folder, using the OLD folder’s name. If you choose to use a different name altogether, make sure you set up the Site Definition in Dreamweaver.
4. One more thing to consider. If you’ve made changes to the old “template-functions-general.php” file in the we_includes folder, you will need to replicate these changes to the new file called “general-template.php”.

Lastly, test your upgrade. Remember, you might have a different experience upgrading your Wordpress version. If all else fails, you can always request your web host to help you upgrade for Wordpress version for you. They’ll likely charge you for it (which is why I chose to do it myself), but at least you know they’re more experienced at these sort of things!

Cheers! Happy Upgrading Your Wordpress!

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