Major WordPress update completed

For all my words about how it’s important for sysadmins to patch systems, this website has been running on an old (approx 2 years out of date) version of WordPress, pending a major database cleanup and site redesign.

Eventually, my requirement to move to an up-to-date platform became more critical than the need to sort out my categories and tags (which date back to before WordPress supported tags), cleanup the database, and make everything all fresh and lovely (as Long Zheng did recently at IStartedSomething).  Time is something I simply don’t have much of at the moment but I have to say it was really simple:

1. Backup the database and the rest of site (just in case).
2. Copy over new WordPress files (taking care to preserve existing plugins and themes).
3. Go to the administration URL and click the button to upgrade the database.
4. Job done!

(there are more details on upgrading WordPress over on the Codex)

In fact, it felt a little too simple, if you know what I mean… like maybe I missed something?

I will still redesign the site.  I will still sort out the taxonomy and probably move to a clean database.  At least I intend to do those things, one day.  In the meantime I have a bunch of old plugins running against a new WordPress installation – if you notice anything that’s not working, please let me know (the easiest way is probably to leave a comment on this post).

[Update 18:25: Most of the plugins have now been updated too… but please do let me know if you see anything that’s broken]