That was easy.
About half an hour, I logged into my dashboard for this blog and got a notice that there was a newer version of WordPress available. I’ve been keeping my plugins up to date since converting to WordPress last month, so I figured I’d do the same with the blog software itself. I figured it was probably easy enough to do.
I’m sure the folks WordPress could find a way to make the upgrade process even easier. I’m just not sure how they would. The actual upgrade process took less than thirty seconds, and two of those seconds involved me clicking a button on my Update page in the dashboard. That was all that was required of me.
The full process took between ten and thirty minutes because I followed the recommendation of backing up the blog’s database and the files on the site first. Even that was pretty easy. I couldn’t remember how to do a MySQL backup. Fortunately, the folks at WordPress were kind enough to include a link to thorough and easy to follow (though I think some of their screenshots may be for older versions of VDeck and myPHPAdmin) instructions on how to do just that. Then backing up the files was a simple matter of logging into my server with Filezilla and pulling the entire directory structure over to my computer. (That’s why i don’t know how long the process actually took. Once I started the transfer, I swapped windows and did other things. When I came back, Filezilla was idling and waiting for me to tell it what to do next.)
Back when I used Movable Type, I upgraded the software a couple times. It wasn’t nearly as pleasant. I had to go searching for backup instructions. I had to download the software myself, then move it to my server. Then I had to initiate a database update process from an included upgrade script. The last time I tried to upgrade Movable Type, it’s that last step that failed. The upgrade script kept locking up on me.
If future updates with WordPress continue to go as smoothly as this one did, it’s just one more reason I’ll be glad I made the switch.