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1. Floyd3
   Member
   Posted 3 months ago #

   Hi everyone! I've spent about the last 3 months building a website and am now finished and ready to launch it tonight!

   But before I did, I was thinking of upgrading to the latest version of WordPress (from 3.2.1 to 3.3.1), upgrading all available plugins, (6 of the 17 plugins I use have newer versions available) and optimizing my WP Database Tables in phpMyAdmin. These are the last 3 things I was considering doing before "going live" tonight.

   Can doing any of those 3 things mess up all my hard work? What should I be careful of?

   The theme I'm using was last updated in July of 2010 and says it's compatible for WordPress 3.0. I'm afraid that by updating, that it could also no longer work or get messed up, too.

   Are there major changes in going from WP 3.2.1 to 3.3.1? Most of my tweaks and editing were done to my theme. I take it upgrading WordPress won't overwrite those changes?

   I have made a backup of the database and all files of the good working site. Is it easy to revert back if something goes wrong? (I've never had to restore from backups.)

   The site is completely done and ready to launch right now - so do you think I should just do so - without upgrading WP, plugins and optimizing the tables? Just launch the site with the slightly outdated versions of WP and plugins, since I have a good backup, if something were to go wrong in the future with having old versions of WP, themes and plugins?

   This part scares me the most! I've put hundreds of hours into this site and this is the very last thing to possibly do before launching tonight.

   Please let me know what you think! :)

2. DewPointProductions
   Member
   Posted 3 months ago #

   If you're working on a dev server local or otherwise you could always launch your site as is and then, after it is live, go back and do the updates on the dev server. That way you won't be up all night tonight if something goes wrong with the upgrade.

   In general you do want to be on the latest version of all software WP and plugins since there are often security vulnerabilities that get plugged for the newer versions.

3. Floyd3
   Member
   Posted 3 months ago #

   Hi DPP, thanks for the advice.

   I don't have a dev server or local way to test things, unfortunately.

   What I meant by 'going live' and 'launching', actually was by advertising it on my other websites. No one knows of this URL yet, but I will send quite a bit of traffic to it pretty fast just by linking to it from my other sites. It's already launched and live in the online sense, just nobody knows about it.

   I've done everything very methodically for this site, making sure to keep code clean, and make it the most stable, fastest, best site I've ever built. I'm very proud of it and just want to keep doing the right things with this one.

   So I think I want to, and should probably upgrade, as you suggested.

   With that in mind, do you think I should just go for it and hope for the best? If things get messed up, try to fix them? And if they can't be fixed, there's always a way to revert back that I'll just have to figure out how to do?

   Is there anything else I can do before going for it? Should I optimize the tables first? Any more pro-active preventitive measures or pre-upgrade steps besides backing up?

4. Floyd3
   Member
   Posted 3 months ago #

   Also, does it matter what order to do things?

   I was thinking of doing it like this.

   1. Backup (done)
   2. Upgrade WordPress
   3. Upgrade Plugins
   4. Optimize Tables

   Then if all goes well:
   5. Backup again

   Or is it best to upgrade the plugins first, then WordPress? - or anything like that?

5. Floyd3
   Member
   Posted 3 months ago #

   Does anyone else know that could weigh in?

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