Must Know Information About Upgrading to WordPress 3.1!
Every time a major WordPress release arrives, people get scared!
Why? Because just like nearly everything in life… the upgrade procedure can be dangerous.
Point #1 When you know the facts and know how to play safe, the risk is minimized. Why do people get scared? Because we’ve all heard of people losing their websites to a failed upgrade. Yup. It happens. However, no website that is backed up properly is ever really lost.
Point #2. You must upgrade but you should not upgrade until you have a complete backup. This has been one of the smoothest version upgrades I’ve seen in a long time. All of the conflicts I’ve run into are plugin related.
Point #3 You will very likely have zero trouble completing the upgrade successfully. Yes there are going to be hiccups for a few websites, it always happens but I and most others in the WordPress support community feel REALLY good about this release’s stability.
Point #4 This release was probably two additional months in the making due to incredibly strenuous attention to details. WordPress 3.1 is live – meaning you’re going to start seeing a small upgrade notice in your Dashboard.
Point #5 It has been through an extended beta test and five release candidates. It’s just been given the green light! However, even though it is now live, I highly suggest waiting one week (no more, no less) before upgrading.
Point #6 This gives the masses time to upgrade and find any unspotted flaws. Generally these flaws will be in plugins that were not extensively tested by their developers. By waiting a week and keeping your ear to the ground for a green light from support staff like myself, you ensure the best probability of a trouble-free upgrade. You can further ensure you will have a smooth upgrade by going to the wordpress plugin repository (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/), searching for any plugins you use, and ensuring they are listed as known compatible with WordPress 3.1.
Point #7 Delaying upgrading your blog more than a few weeks after a major or security update (which this is both) greatly increases your risk of your blog being hacked or infected.
Point #8. Generally speaking the damage done to your business and to your nerves by being hacked and infecting your clients and having to do a long cleanup procedure is far more devastating to your business than a failed upgrade that needs to be recovered from a recent backup. Recoveries aren’t fun but they aren’t so bad either… infection cleanups (particularly including cleaning up your soiled name if you do not realize your infected in time) can be incredibly painful.
If you’re either too uncertain of your ability to upgrade your blog successfully or would rather not be bothered with it, I offer both hourly and contract based support time.
Point #9 This means I can assist you with your backups, upgrades or both. My clients know that as soon as the green light is given, their blogs will be taken care of by me and my team!
