I am lost with trying to upgrade

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You’ve got two wp-content folders? And what’s ioncube, jackiebkbak? It seems like you have too much and too little. Just unzip the 2.7.1 pack on your computer, see what folders and files are there and that’s what you need to have on your server.

also, you want the wordpress files inside the public_html folder as that is the root of your site

Right! Didn’t even think of that.

Believe me Gangleri I have been through the update quite a bit but I somehow cannot figure it out. Dont ask me what ioncube is that is what I had when I first went and looked into my public html file.
What I have done so far is I have uploaded the updated version of wordpress and extracted it and what you see as
-wordpress
+ wp-admin
+ wp-content
+ wp-includes
in the public html file is the extracted updated version. The rest is what was originally there. That is

– public_html
cgi-bin
ioncube
jackiebkbak
– rss2wp
images
inc
js
-wp-content
+ themes

That is why I told you I am so lost.

Make your life easy and install the Automatic Upgrade Plugin.

Then once you’re upgraded, you can delete that plugin as the newest version of WordPress has that function built in.

I cannot do that because I followed the wordpress instructions and deleted all the files they asked to delete like wp-admin, plugins etc so I cannot even open my blog now.

I realised the problem. My blog was in my root directory. What I did was I transferred all the files to a sub directory, did the upgrade and then I had more problems. Spoke to my hosting company who figured out the problem. Anyway I retransferred all the folders in the subdirectory back again into the root directory. Now I cannot access my admin panel so I am waiting till my hosting company recitifies that.

Looks like I have a lot of work to do.

Jackie, read Samuel’s reply. The WP files should be in the public_html folder. You shouldn’t even be able to upload them anywhere else. Delete all WP files that you see and upload everything to the public_html folder.