I’m thinking of upgrading the blog to WordPress 2.1.  I did it to my development site and didn’t have a single problem. But just because I didn’t have any issues there won’t mean that things will go off without a hitch here.  Here, I’ve got a lot more plugins and a non-standard theme that might not work.  Normally, my hosting provider takes care of the install but I figured that I start messing around with a WP install and get to know this system a little more. Installing the LAMP part is still a mystery.  One of these days, I’ll get it up and running on my Ubuntu box – which, by the way, is going strong with over 137 days of no unplanned downtime.

I followed the simple instructions that the folks at WordPress recommend you follow.  Its pretty standard, really.  Back up your database using phpAdmin and download all your HTML generating files within the hosting space for the domain and you’re covered if when you make a mistake. Then, its recommended you delete all the files you just downloaded as a backup from the original space.  Copy over the new WP 2.1 files and run the upgrade command. Of course, you’ll probably need to recreate your wp-config.php file like I had to for the upgrade to take but once it does, like most upgrades… its done in a flash.

From the poking around I did on my dev site, I’ve found the changes to be great. The sticky features I haven’t played with in great detail but it can be very helpful for a few. They changed how some items like comments, links, uploads, and posts are managed but the basic logic is there – only the navigation to them see mend to change. The big changes (besides the bug fixes) are found in the composition windows.
The new composition window is very AJAX-y. It includes a spell checker (finally!) and a tab to quickly move between WYSIWYG and HTML editing modes – a must for all power users. And it also sports a new upload manager with better thumbnail support. I’ll be honest when I say I haven’t tried that last part out but that’s what many other people are saying about it.

Overall, I love the changes and already am salivating at what could be coming down the WP 2.2 pipeline. I’ll slowly upgrade all the other blogs I host and see how the themes and plugins interact with the new version and report back any anomalies…

Because I know you care.