Upgrading is a bother

pubwvj
(@pubwvj)

16 years, 8 months ago

Matt wrote, “Today we have two security-related releases available for both users of our main 2.2 branch and the legacy 2.0 branch. As these releases include only security and minor bugfixes they should not cause any plugin or theme compatibility issues, so you have no good excuse not to upgrade.

The biggest problem I have with WordPress is upgrading.

1) I can’t trust an upgrade will work so I dare not upgrade because I don’t want my blog going down. Upgrades need to be bulletproof.

2) The actual upgrade process is a pain in the buttocks. Bad enough for a single deployment but I must do it for my two blogs plus both of my sons, my wife, etc. I would like to just do it once for all of them. Doing each one separately takes a lot of time.

3) I’ve got blog posts and a life. Thus upgrading gets stuck in my “Round-Tu-It” draw, something I’ll do when I get around to it. Then another upgrade comes out…

4) Many software packages upgrade themselves – with the permission (check box) of the user. This would be far better. It notices the upgrade, and does it, at most asking. This still doesn’t solve #1 above but it does solve #2 and #3.

5) Upgrading should automatically first create a backup zip file of the database and all associated files before even thinking about touching the system. Basic IT.

So, once again, I might not upgrade and yes, I do have excuses.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

whooami
(@whooami)

16 years, 8 months ago

Upgrades need to be bulletproof

thats an impossibilty. plain and simple. I could give you 100 supporting reason why, but dont feel like I need to. Look at that from a common-sense POV though, and you’ll see the flaw in that statement.

As for the rest — thats kinda the breaks, isnt it?

I doubt you are only person on the www with a life, kids, work, a wife, husband, whatever..

Part of having a web site is taking care of it. (Unless you chose to use static HTML pages)

Ownership means responsibility, in all things. Web sites are no different.

and gosh, maybe next time you’ll actually be bothered to post to the right area?

Dgold
(@dgold)

16 years, 8 months ago

1) I agree with not-trusting that an upgrade will work. I don’t trust it either. I still feel burned about the time they deprecated some common template tags in 2.x that were in the Default Theme, thus breaking every theme that users customized based on the Default under WP 1.5. However I disagree that every Upgrade should be bullet-proof, I think that is an impossible standard (if you want them to continue developing). I think this is a risk Users have to accept, and I also think it is a problem that the Developers should be mindful of & try to avoid whenever possible. When the problem can’t be avoided, it should be spelled out clearly in the announcement: “this release will probably break X, Y, and Z.”

2) I agree, upgrading is a pain, ESPECIALLY (to me) because of the inefficiency (read:dumbness) of tens-of-thousands of users re-uploading 1,000 files per blog when only 20 files have changed. Therefore I recommend reading the TRAC (developer site) that shows the changelog, so you can only replace the files that actually changed. Better yet — whooami was kind enough to make a ZIP of the 2.2.2 files that changed since 2.2.1. So if you are going from 2.2.1 to 2.2.2, then check this out:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/128982
I tried it yesterday and it worked — on about 10 blogs!!

Part B: How many blogs do you have, anyway? I just discovered an awesome new multiblogging techique, that lets you have as many blogs as you want — all using 1 wordpress engine!! And this is NOT the infamous WPMU, it’s another method, developed on this site:
http://striderweb.com/nerdaphernalia/2006/10/hello-again-world/
Keep in mind it is cutting-edge, but for me it was shockingly easy. I set up 5 blogs in under an hour last week. This week, I got the upgrade ZIP from whooami and I upgraded the 1 WP that drives those 5 blogs. Bingo! All are upgraded. Fastest upgrade I’ve ever had with WP.

3) Yep

4) 5) Personally I don’t care about automatic upgrading. I just think they should not waste our time & bandwidth with upgrading 1,000 files (made-up number, estimated) when only 20 files changed.

I just think WP should offer ZIP files of the Changed-Files, specific to each upgrade hop (1.5.x to 2.2.2 needs ________, while 2.2.1 to 2.2.2 only needs ____).

mrmist
(@mrmist)

16 years, 8 months ago

5) Upgrading should automatically first create a backup zip file of the database and all associated files before even thinking about touching the system. Basic IT.

Basic IT would suggest that you take a manual backup before any great change.

There are plugins that will semi-automise the upgrade process though. Maybe that will make life easier

http://techie-buzz.com/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade-plugin-update.html

http://www.zirona.com/software/wordpress-instant-upgrade

Though I cannot vouch for either, they both have lots of comments.

Les Bessant
(@lesbessant)

16 years, 8 months ago

If you have shell (command line) access on your hosting account, Bryan Layman’s EasyWPUpdate (http://www.thecodecave.com/article418) is absolutely wonderful. It can update as many sites as you like from one command (assuming they’re all accessible from the same session).

It backs up the files and the database, downloads the latest version of WordPress, replaces the files, and runs the upgrade.

I use it every time for my own site, and a few I host for friends.