You shouldn’t lose the template, though you may need to refresh it to take advantage of new features and tags.
For that large a jump, I’d seriously consider getting hold of some of the intermediate releases and upgrading in stages, rather than trying to go straight to 2.6.
If you copy all your web files, and backup your database, then you can always go back if you get an issue.
i would test it locally first. download XAMPP and install it, then WP, and add your template. If it dies, you saved yourself a migraine. If it works, well you know a clean install is safe. That’s a start.
Will upgrading 1.5.1 to 2.6 kill my template?
Theres no doubt that a theme built for 1.5 is going to “break” in an upgrade to 2.6.x — the template tags have gone through huge changes in the amount of time that has passed between those versions.
What will you need to do, if you want to continue using that theme, is replace the outdated tags with the newer ones. Its not hard, but it can be time consuming.
Moreover, a good deal of any plugins that you are using are going to break.
IF you want to upgrade successfully, you will want to disable ALL of your plugins and switch to the default theme before beginning the upgrade process. Youre also going to want to do incremental updgrades … 1.5 -> 2.0.11 -> 2.1.x -> 2.2.3 -> 2.3.3 -> 2.5.1 -> 2.6.1
I would not test it locally.. if youre not keeping up with upgrades, chances are youre not going to want to screw around with installing a web server on your desktop. If you do what I suggested, and follow the rest of the extended upgrade instructions to a tee, you should do okay. Ive done it — its not that hard.
Once upgraded, then you start working on putting back together your old theme.
One huge precaution that helps — if you’ve done this — is for every plugin call in your theme to have the IF PLUGIN EXISTS…. THEN…. code. So that your theme won’t break just because of deactivating plugins.
Then you’re left with errors that will come up because of the functions changed in WP itself, not plugins. As has been described above already.
There will probably be quite a few things changed. It’s been a huge pain in the butt for me, I really dislike when they change functions in the core that breaks legacy themes, but I guess it can’t be helped.
OK, I think I’m fine with disabling plugins and switching to the default template, in thinking about it. If it would make things easier. People can live with the site as “basic” for a few weeks. What I am trying to do is to get the system to the point to where it can export via that WXR format, as that seems the simplest way to do what I need to do in the next phase of this project.
The only thing I’m really worried about now is exporting the PodPress elements from that plugin – I want to be able to export that data (where the audio files I’ve linked to some posts reside) so I can import that with the posts into a new system. I’m transferring the website into ExpressionEngine because I’ve become an EE guru and there’s functionality I want that I can get easier in EE (not that I don’t love WP, but for this site, I need more control to do some really custom things, and I know how I can accomplish that in EE, but not WP). So, if I go back to the basic template, disable the plugins (including PodPress), upgrade, then install the newest PodPress, then do the WXR export, will that work?
(And yeah, I’d rather not do a local install to test, not that I can’t – I used to do it all the time, but not in the last few years LOL. And the site didn’t get updated because, well, I got lazy, and then several versions went by and it got to be too much of a pain. I don’t get paid for this website, it’s my blog, and I spend enough time writing it, never mind maintaining it. Heh.)
