Upgraded to WordPress 2.5-RC1 (Updated)

Well I’ve just completed an amazingly painless upgrade to the first release candidate ofWordPress 2.5, the only thing that caught me out was an old functions.php file left over from a previous release that caused a PHP5 error about redefining a function!

There’s bound to be some hidden breakage that I’ve not yet spotted, so leave a comment (if you can) or drop me an email as chris (at-the-domain) csamuel.org with the details please.

Update: After a few days of playing around with it I’ve got to say I like it the new admin interface. I’m finding it much easier to navigate and compared to the other WP 2.3 sites I admin the dashboard seems a lot less cluttered and that ever-so-subjective word, “clean”.

The only niggle I’ve got so far is that now in the widgets view you can only see the one column of widgets at a time, so if you’re using a 3 column theme (as the current one here is) you can no longer move a widget directly from one column to another. But I can live with that.

7 thoughts on “Upgraded to WordPress 2.5-RC1 (Updated)

  1. I have been trying to resist upgrading until the official release, but it is hard and your description of it being painless is not helping any 😉

    Do you use a lot of plugins? I use a whole bunch of them and am more worried about those breaking than anything in the wp core.

    How do you like the new admin interface?

  2. Hi Lori,

    I’ve got a few plugins (about 23 active), but the way I did it was to run a test under a different virtual domain with a copy of both the database and the installation. The rough steps were:

    • Create a new test domain in DNS
    • Copy the database to a new one and set up appropriate grants on it.
    • Go to the options table in the database and change the two references to the old URL of the blog to the new one (otherwise you’ll find yourself getting redirected to the production blog!)
    • Copy the installation to a new directory and configure Apache to point the new domain to it
    • Edit the wp-config.php to match the new database and the username and password for it
    • Go to the new domain and make sure it works!

    Caveat emptor: Batteries not included, if it breaks you get to keep both parts! 🙂

    From then on you should be able to play with your new testing domain (including upgrading) without worrying about breaking your production blog. Good luck!

  3. You have a great blog here. That backup emailing thing sounds handy. I’m going to check that out. Good luck with your blog! Greetings from Lapland, Finland.

  4. Wow! You are very thorough!

    Since it was my own site and I had backups of all files and the database, I used the quick and dirty ‘update and disable all plugins, upload new files, and cross my fingers’ method. It was smooth and painless. The easiest update I have had in a while. 2.3 was okay, but 2.1 and 2.2 not so much.

    I think I will try your system for updating my client sites. Even with complete backups, your way completely avoids the possibility and stress of breaking a site and having to keep it down during troubleshooting.

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