How to Upgrade WordPress version 2.6.5 to 2.7.1
Matt Mullenweg and a whole lot of creative and highly competent technology professionals came up with the most talked about upgrade for WordPress called Coltrane commonly known as 2.7.1 this version is named after legendary Jazz saxophonist John Coltrane . As the wordpress team puts it “The real reason Coltrane is such a huge leap forward is because the community was so involved with every step of the process. Over 150 people contributed code directly to the release, our highest ever, with many tens of thousands more participating in the polls, surveys, tests, mailing lists, and other feedback mechanisms the WordPress dev team used in putting this release together” Source wordpress.org. Check out the new set of features in 2.7.1 here
The reason i am writing this article is since it was first released on December 10th 2008 I have been waiting to find an easy and safe way to upgrade my wordpress version 2.6.5 to the latest. Finally it was yesterday, after 3 long months I was able to upgrade it in 10 minutes flat and without any issues. I am sure there will be a lot of bloggers in the blogsphere who want to upgrade it to the latest version but are not able to do so for their lack of technical knowledge and fear of messing up their blogs, which otherwise are doing just fine.
I have used wordpress automatic upgrade plugin by Keith Dsouza, Ronalfy the plugin has been downloaded more than 2,00,000 times and has been updated recently on 19th Feb 09. My sincere thanks to both of them without this plugin it would have been a herculean task for me to upgrade to the latest version.
Since the day it was updated I have been constantly doing research on what other are saying about the plugin and tracking each and every issues. Finally i decided to take the plunge and to my pleasant surprise it worked like a charm without any issues. A word of caution, though this plugin automatically backs up you files and database I suggest you do it manually just in case something terribly goes wrong. Also please check if your current sets of plugins are compatible with latest version 2.7.1 you can find list here .
What does the plugin really do?
- Backs up the files and makes available a link to download it.
- Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
- Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips it.
- Puts the site in maintenance mode.
- De-activates all active plugins and remembers it.
- Upgrades wordpress files.
- Gives you a link that will open in a new window to upgrade installation.
- Re-activates the plugins.
At the end I must that that the upgrade has really lived up to its hype and WordPress team has worked really hard on the usability factor. Can’t wait to the see the next version of improvements you can check the proposed dates here
Share your WordPress upgrade (Success/horror) story here.
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Comments
Million thanks to your great tips. I had the phobia to upgrade from WP2.6.5 to WP2.7.1, and it had been delayed for 2 weeks, until this evening, I used Google search for “how to upgrade from wordpress 2.6.5 to 2.7.1″ then your post was shown. Everything was done smoothly and without any hassle. You have solved my problem and also gotten away my worries about losing my blog. Thank you once again, and wish you all the best. Cheers!
Thats what i do on this blog. share my own experience on various things that i do. i am glad my experience has helped you migrate to 2.7.1 as once i was worried about it as well. but now you will have auto upgrade option right from your control panel in 2.7.1 so no more worries for people like us ;-)
Thanks man. It is awesome.