Advise on WP Upgrade with Our Website If Possible

A) Verify that your theme and all plugins in use are compatible with 3.3 first.

B) Copy the wp-contents folder through FTP or your web hosts cPanel etc..

C) Deactivate all plugins.

D) Switch to default theme.

E) Copy complete site files with FTP.

F) Make sure you have a full and proper backup of your MySQL Database.

G) Use FTP to upload WP3.3.

H) Remove/copy/delete wp-contents contents (this is where themes and plugins are kept) on the new WP3.3.

J) Replace with the contents of your old wp-contents folder.

K) Make sure to edit wp-config.php prior to uploading.

L) Login Admin, switch to your theme, test site.

M) Activate plugins one at a time and test site.

Note: you could do all this in a separate sub domain etc for testing then when done point your domain to that folder.

So I am going to guess this is a “No, Do NOT automatically update as it will screw your website up and replace the files you mentioned?”

Apologies but I would love to find a way to upgrade easily but I have added ALOT of code for formatting, advertisements, appearance, content management etc…

The next question, as well, is going to be if everyone is finding that most plugins are now non-compatible.

If you had not customized anything you would likely be OK, since not, it is required to replace your customizations. There is not a better answer I know of (and btw, any core file edits will not be updated through the auto update feature, which I think is the big problem folks are having, they allowed a plugin or theme to mod core files/database functionality.)

Appreciated…. we will leave her be as she be… too bad. WordPress needs to find a way to upgrade without affecting key characteristics of the site.

Do you know what files you modified? Why not just do a manual upgrade and not bring those files over?

Because they are main files like function.php. To bring the file over and keep the old, I would believe that could cause a certan amount of risk and the best move would be to manually update and then move every code customization over manually from the old file to the new.

That would be very cumbersome.

Tx

Surprisingly, it takes less time than this thread…which always makes me wonder why people are so worried…back it all up first, create a test folder in your host, use a sub.domain for testing, fix the files associated with the sub, point your actual domain to the new folder when testing is done and you have then not affected your site but for a very brief time…

I truly wish it was that easy. I am fairly fluent and have done some extensive mods on the site; too many to count actually.

I have changed code in the premium theme files as well as the standard files.

There is no way it could be as quik as you describe. I wish.

Thanks and I will mull the upgrade over.

ACTUALLY….a specific example.

I use a program called ADRotate for several of my banners, four of which I found more convenient to take away from the theme control and inserted appropriate code myself in the appropriate spots.

So now, I simply change the ad in AdRotate and thats it.

Now, if I were to shut ADRotate off, my site would crash (been there) because of the code that doesnt make sense any longer.

So…thats an example of how integrated I have made things.