Wordpress is the most popular blogging software in use today and a new release is scheduled for March.

Version 2.5 has been eagerly anticipated by many bloggers, especially as release 2.4 was abandoned to concentrate on improving security in the existing codebase. I predict that there will be a lot of early adopters for the 2.5 release - will you be one of them?

Gather Information

If you are going to upgrade your Wordpress installation, you need to make a plan. It’s a fairly complex operation so invest some time in learning what you need to do and what can go wrong.

Make a list of the important information about your current blog:

• The FTP address, username and password for your web host
• The database connection name, username and password for your Wordpress database
• The software version of your current Wordpress installation
• The name, version and author of your blog’s theme
• The names, versions and authors of all your installed plugins

I recommend maintaining this list over the lifetime of your blog. You are likely to upgrade several times over the years and collating all this information can take up valuable time. Do it once, really well.

Ask Some Questions

Go through each of your plugins and check that they will work with Wordpress 2.5. You can find most information in the codex. Don’t forget to check the version numbers too.

If some of your plugins are not listed or have been found incompatible, it’s time for a little detective work...

Find out:

• Is the plugin redundant? Maybe 2.5 includes this functionality by default
• Is it still in active development? It is probably worth waiting a week for a popular plugin to be fixed and re-tested
• Is there a (better) alternative? Google around for recommendations

You might need to go through a similar process with your Wordpress theme. Theoretically, few changes have been made that affect the theme engine and all those tested have passed but its worth a check.

Practice Makes Perfect

All professional bloggers should practice the upgrade procedure on a private copy of their blog - and most amateurs probably should too.

Putting together a private copy of your blog is pretty straightforward. Get an old desktop machine and install Ubuntu Linux on there. Hook it up to your home network, install Apache, MySql and a backup copy of your live blog.

Having a private copy of your website is invaluable for testing large upgrades, new themes and its well worth the effort spent.

There is a great resource taking you through a Wordpress upgrade by Blog Herald which covers pretty much everything you need to know. Keep a pen and paper handy in case something non-obvious crops up, so you can refer to your notes when you do the installation for real.

Everything OK?

So you’ve upgraded your private copy. Is everything working?

Go through the site with a fine toothed comb. Check every single form twice - once as a logged in user, once as a browsing guest. Post an entry. Delete it. Post a comment. Delete it.

Testing exhaustively on your private copy means you don’t have to do so much on the live copy. Make a list of any issues you find and keep testing - do not get distracted trying to fix the problem, that comes later.

When you have tested as much of the functionality as possible, it’s time to run some qualitative checks:

• Is the site valid? Use the W3C Validator to check
• How fast does the page load? Time it in a variety of browsers, about four seconds is an acceptable time over a fast connection
• Is it optimised for search engines? There are lots of great tools that can help you
• Does it display OK in all the major browsers?
• Is your site easy to use? Count how many mouse clicks a reader must perform to post a comment

Don’t be disheartened if you end up with a long list of issues to fix from your testing. You need to prioritise by decreasing order of importance:

1. Security problems - increased liklihood of your blog being hacked
2. Fundamental problems - if you cannot post or your readers cannot read your posts, that’s a showstopper
3. Functional problems - search not finding the right pages, or readers unable to comment
4. User Interface Problems - if you want cosmetic changes or ease-of-use improvements
5. SEO Problems - a low priority because search engine placements are very fluid

Any problems in areas 1 or 2 should be fixed before upgrading your live blog. As for other areas, check against your live blog, is the new functionality worse than the old? Use your analytics to find how many users actually use the affected functionality. Make a judgement call.

Upgrading The Live Blog

Find a quiet time for your blog (2am perhaps) and pick a date a few days from now. Tell any other bloggers that contribute to your blog that you are planning to upgrade on that day and ask if it will cause them problems.

When zero hour comes, follow the upgrade instructions from earlier together with your notes. You should find that the process is a lot easier second time around.

Don’t forget to blog about your experiences and ask your readership to contact you if they spot any problems.

The best of British luck to anyone upgrading!