The simplicity of WordPress upgrades

One of the complaints I have heard about not running your own WordPress installation versus going with a managed service like Blogger or LiveJournal is that it is difficult to maintain. Specifically, that it is difficult to upgrade. This is why, about six months ago, a worm went around and took down a bunch of people’s blogs. They failed to upgrade and the virus took advantage of a known security hole in an old version of WordPress. Admittedly, MUCH older versions of WordPress required more manual work to upgrade, but versions from about the past year or two (plenty of time for those out-of-date folks to have upgraded and protected against the worm) have had two-click upgrades.

I upgraded over the weekend and took video of it. The whole process took 23 seconds — and that is only because I paused to look at a plugin I did not want to upgrade yet. (I have made manual changes to one plugin, so an upgrade of that plugin takes a bit more work — but my situation in this regard is atypical).

From WordPress 2.9.1 to 2.9.2 in 23 seconds! The moral of the story is to not fear the maintenance of WordPress. Once installed, it is a wonderful flexible content management system capable of blog posts, static pages, and just about anything else if you can find the right plugin.

Posted in: Code Dear Diary

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Brian Enigma

Brian Enigma is a Portlander, manipulator of atoms & bits, minor-league blogger, and all-around great guy. He typically writes about the interesting “maker” projects he's working on, but sometimes veers off into puzzles, software, games, local news, and current events.

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