After my Friday Find of 07/06/07 I was compelled to immediately upgrade to the latest release of WordPress and change all of my passwords for my account at Dreamhost. If you’re about to upgrade to the latest release of WordPress, here is a quick pre-upgrade check list you should complete before pressing the “go” button.

Backup Your Current Theme

Most WordPress users have made some sort of modification to their present theme. Anything from advertisements to traffic tracking code snippets counts as a modification. Keep in mind that if you want to keep these changes, and I suspect you do, then you need to backup your theme because upgrading WordPress can wipe out these customizations.

To backup your theme I recommend doing a simple FTP transfer from your host to your local machine (contact your hosting service for details about FTP access). Once you’ve logged in with an FTP client, navigate to the wp-content directory of your domain. Next, open the theme directory and locate your theme. Finally, just copy your entire theme directory to your local machine. In my case I copied (my domain)\wp-content\themes\abstrakt3c to my local machine.

Backup Any Custom Images

I don’t use many images in my posts, but when I do, I locate them in the wp-content\themes\upload directory. If you store your post images in a special location, make sure to copy those down to your local machine. Again, I suggest using FTP to move these files from your host to your local machine.

Backup Your Plug-in Directory

If you’ve been using WordPress for any length of time, you’ve probably installed a few non-standard plug-ins to enhance your site. These files were installed in the wp-content\plugins directory when you added them to your site. Same as the other backups, I suggest you just copy this entire directory to your local machine using FTP.

Backup your WordPress MySQL Database

Here is the most difficult, but most important, part of the backup process. Your site’s MySQL database is where all of your hard work is stored. You definitely don’t want to skip this step.

Since each hosting service is slightly different I really can’t provide exactly steps for this backup requirement. I suggest you look for something called phpMyAdmin in the support area of your hosting provider. This tool provides a web based interface to your MySQL database and makes it possible to export your content to a compressed zip, or gzip, file that you can download. Search your provider’s online help for exact steps.

Disable All Plug-ins

Can’t remember where I heard this one but it does make sense and is easy to do. Log into your WordPress site as admin and head to the plug-ins section of the navigator. Disable each running plug-in and then log out of your site.

Ready to Press the Button

Once everything has been backed up and plugins disabled, you’re ready to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress. Again, the actual upgrade will depend on your hosting service. If they’re worth anything, then they have a one-button install/upgrade option for WordPress. If you don’t have that option, I suggest you refer to the WordPress online documentation. You can also read my post that outlines the required steps for installing WordPress on a WampServer. The target server will be different but the basic steps are similar.

The upgrade, more than likely, will go very smooth and all that is left is to copy your original theme back to your upgraded site, and then enable all of the disabled plug-ins (unless something went wrong, all of those plug-ins are still just sitting there). Keep in mind, however, that an upgrade can often render your favorite plug-ins useless. If you just can’t imagine your blog without certain plug-ins, then do some research and visit the home page of each plug-in for the latest information on WordPress version compatibilities . Finally, if you want to be extremely careful, then I suggest you stage this whole process on your local machine using Wamp (or Lamp if your a Linux user). You’ll need to install your current running version of WordPress first so you can simulate the complete upgrade and verify that your theme and plug-ins all still work. For details about Wamp and WordPress together read my previous published two part post about installing Wamp and then WordPress.

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