Seriously, I think I need to hire a supervisor to watch me use my blog, because recently it seems that no matter what I touch, or what I do, I always end up screwing things up. My most recent failure was last night, when I attempted to upgrade automatically to Wordpress 2.8. I’m assuming if you’re using Wordpress you’ve seen the “Upgrade to Wordpress 2.8!” sign at the top of your dashboard by now? Well, I figured, why not? Anything automatic just has to be easy, right? Besides, I’d automatically upgraded plugins before with no problem, so I was pro.

I clicked the link and it warned me to do a backup. Meh, I’ll be right.

(This is the part where the girl in the movie is running towards an alley…and the audience knows the killer clown is hiding in there, brandishing a knife, and they begin to throw popcorn at the screen and shout “DON’T DO IT!!!!!!” but she can’t hear them and runs into the alley anyway and then the PSYCHO music starts playing and she gets stabbed and DIES and wished that she’d paid attention to the audience and BACKED UP HER BLOG because…)

One click was all it took. A few seconds of loading, then an error message. It seemed that the installation had got halfway through, but then failed. Too bad, I thought, I’ll just have to upgrade another way. I clicked on the Dashboard button absent-mindedly … and got a white page with “index of wp-admin” and nothing else.

Uhh, what?

I clicked on my blog’s link … and got Wordpress’s dreaded white page of death.

There was absolutely nothing there. My blog was a blank page. With one click of a mouse, and in less than one minute, I had killed my blog. I realised this was something that couldn’t be just “undone” I would need to tell Phill what I had done.

Oohhhhhhh, shit.

Phill was sitting with his back to me, doing some work on his computer. I cleared my throat timidly. “Uh, Phill?”

“Yeah?”

“Um, I have a problem. With my blog.”

“What problem?”

“Well, it’s not exactly there anymore.”

A pause, then: “What do you mean, not exactly there?”

He turned and I showed him the blank page. I could see his expression turn from confusement to a furious OH-DEAR-LORD-SHE-KILLED-HER-BLOG in two seconds flat. Through gritted teeth, he said: “What. Did. You. Do?”

I felt myself blush. “I tried to automatically upgrade to Wordpress 2.8 but it didn’t work. It came up with an error message and then I couldn’t load my blog, or the dashboard anymore. They’re just blank now.”

“What did the error say?”

Silence.

“You didn’t write it down, did you? Why did you click away? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO FIX IT IF I DON’T KNOW WHAT WENT WRONG????” There was a pause, then: “Did you at least backup before you started?”

I made an apologetic face and he let out a frustrated noise, turned around and started typing away. Tap tap tap. A few swear words. Tap tap. More mumbled swear words. Tap tap tap. He stopped suddenly. “There’s nothing in your wp-admin file. NOTHING. It looks like it got as far as wiping the old Wordpress, but didn’t install the new one.”

My heart sank. My blog was dead … again. Is Wordpress trying to tell me something?

Tap tap tap. Swearing. Sip of water. Tap tap. I felt terrible because I knew he’d had a long day and was tired, and now he was pissed off and cranky. Finally, he turned and said, “Okay, try now.”

I clicked on my blog … and whola, it loaded. Well, it sort of loaded. My template was gone – in place of the patterns was just a big blank blue page. Two of my plugins had been erased. My photos didn’t show up. Phill did some more tapping on his computer and deduced that all of my photos had been erased from the uploads folder. It wasn’t the end of the world, I’d just have to go through and re-add each one. I guess, in a way, it’s lucky that my blog kicked the bucket in April – it means I don’t have two years of posts to go through, just two months’ worth.

At least I had my blog back.

I know I made huge mistakes and my biggest (besides not backing up!) was assuming that clicking the “automatically upgrade” button would just work. I had figured if it didn’t work, everything would go back to normal and it would be as if I hadn’t done anything.I couldn’t have been more wrong! Here are things I should have done before attempting the upgrade.

Things I Should Have Done Before Upgrading my Wordpress Blog

Backup

If I had made a backup, we could have avoided much of the stress and worry.  If you are like me, and wouldn’t know where to start, Lorelle has a really helpful post about backing up your blog. I think some people (me included) just feel like they aren’t going to need a backup, that “it won’t happen to me” – but seriously, my blog has died twice now this year, one time because of me, and the other time because of reasons out of my control. Backing up your blog is very important - especially if you are going to attempt to upgrade and especially if it’s likely you’ll kill it somehow.

Check to see if the theme is compatible with 2.8

The reason my theme didn’t load is because it’s not quite compatible with 2.8. This means I had to find one that was – and, as 2.8 was only released on June 10, it’s likely that a lot of the themes you use or look at, won’t be compatible. Knowing if your theme will survive the upgrade will be useful because you won’t have to find a new one, or attempt to fix the old one, if it’s not compatible. Wordpress has a list of themes that are compatible here.

Check to see if the plugins are compatible with 2.8

Two of my plugins were eaten by the upgrade. We aren’t sure why, but we assume it’s because they won’t compatible. It’ll save a lot of time if you can upgrade your plugins so they will ready to go when the upgrade is complete.  Wordpress has a list of plugins that are compatible here. I also read that you should disable all your plugins before upgrading.

Asked for help from a competent person

Phill hosts my blog and fixes it whenever I kill it … and he was sitting right next to me while I was killing my blog. If I’d asked him for help, this could have been avoided. After my failed attempt at the automatic upgrade, he was able to get into the nitty-gritty stuff and manually upgrade. I’ve actually read a lot that people don’t suggest doing automatic upgrades because, well, they don’t always work, and I agree. Next time there’s an upgrade, I’m just going to get Phill to show me how to do it manually.

Wait until the upgrade is old news and the bugs are gone

Normally I wait a long time to upgrade to a newer Wordpress because I find during the earlier stages of a release, there are bugs and kinks that require fixing. I like to hear other people’s experiences and opinions before making the decision to upgrade now, or wait. The sneaky “auto upgrade” option made me think it would be as easy as upgrading a plugin – and it wasn’t! I didn’t realise the upgrade was so new, didn’t realise many plugins and themes wouldn’t yet be compatible, and I paid the price.

Not skip upgrades

I can’t remember if I started out with 2.7, but I’ve read that skipping upgrades is not a good idea and you’re best off gradually upgrading until you reach the latest release, as too big a jump from your version to the newest can result in problems. If I had an earlier version to 2.7, part of my problem could have been the leap.

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Can you think of anything else I should have done? I’d hate for anyone else to go through what we went through last night! Anway, now I’m using Wordpress 2.8 and loving it … but it took me a while to get here, plus a few tears and choice swear words.

Have you upgraded yet? How did it go?