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Users who have better things to do with their time than to upgrade WP, or are overwhelmed with the information presented below and would like someone else to do the dirty job for a meager fee, contact us.

Who should upgrade?
If you use WordPress at least once a day, go right ahead and upgrade. Casual user can refer the list below to check if it fits your bill:

1. You run a business online using WP to power your site
2. You run multiple sites using both WP and other CMS and would one day like to merge them all into one mega site
3. You are happy with your current install but like the new features WP 2.1 has to offer

Who should not?

1. If you have WP on your site but is seldom used as your site is all static
2. Your site is a Mashup
3. You are happy with your current install and do not feel the need to upgrade

How to?
If you decide to upgrade, here’ are two way to go about it. Remember this is my personal opinion based on my experiences, there might be easier ways to go about, but I think I have nailed the most painless technique.

As I mentioned before there is two levels of users in my mind:

1. User A: who will carefully following instructions no matter how bad they are and can do thing even without knowing how they work or not worrying about potentially screwing thing up (like myself)
2. User B: who will screw up no matter how clear the instructions are

Users who fit the “B‿ criteria must get a friend who is more like user A to do it or hire a geek.

User A must check to ensure you have the following:

1. Access to both your WP install (admin login and pass) and to your MySQL/phpAdmin (or at least your host Control Panel)
2. FTP client, a till to get the content/files from your computer to the server and vise versa

Steps below is provided with the assumption that you are familiar with the use of phpAdmin and FTP

Let us assume that your WP is installed at http://www.mywpsite.com/

On your site (step A)

1. Log into your WP site using the admin login and password (http://www.mywpsite.com/wp-admin)
2. Make a list of all plugins that are active
3. Deactivate all active plugins

On the server (step B)

1. Log into your phpAdmin using the login and password provided or set in your control panel to access this portion of the service (http://mysql.mywpsite.com/)
2. Select the database where your WP is installed (f there are more than one DB)
3. Follow the visual instructions provided here to download all your WP database tables. Alternatively, you can use the WP Backup plugin this came default with your old version of WP, but I find this technique easier and definitely a sure shot way to ensure you get all you valuable data backed up

Using FTP (step C)

1. Connect to your site via FTP, login info can be found in your host Control Panel (do not use WebFTP if you are following this instruction)
2. Navigate to the location where your current WP is installed (somewhere in public_html or www or httpdocs)
3. Create an “archives” folder in the location where your “wp-admin”, “wp-content”, “wp-includes” and a while bunch of files with wp-SOMETHING.php are
4. Move all the WP related folder and files to archives by the means of highlighting, dragging and dropping (yes drag and drop still rocks), this ensures the new install add completely clean and new files and not worry about replacing existing files or those that we intend not to replace like all components of “wp-content”, most importantly the wp-config.php file and any .htaccess file (if used)
5. Upload the new version of WP from your computer to the server (not into the archive folder, but to the root where the old WP was)
6. Once the upload is complete, delete the new “wp-content” folder (because it has nothing of use to you except the Akismet plugin)
7. Now go to the “archives” folder you created and moved the old WP to and highlight and drag the “wp-content” back one level to the root where the new WP is installed, this way your themes, plugins and any uploaded files/images are all safe and does not require to be reloaded
8. Now go back to the “archives” folder you created and moved the old WP and highlight and drag the wp-config.php file back one level to the root where the new WP is installed
9. GO back one last time to the “archives” folder you created and moved the old WP and highlight and drag the .htaccess file back one level to the root where the new WP is installed, skip this if you do not use a .htaccess file
10. Now the root where the old WP was will have all new folders an files of the new WP install except the old “wp-content”, wp-config.php file and.htaccess file (if used)
11. Go to http://www.mywpsite.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php
12. Follow the instructions, it’s just a two click steps

Back on your site

1. Log into your WP site using the admin login and password (http://www.mywpsite.com/wp-admin)
2. Use the list of all plugins that were active (created in step C1 above) to activate the plugins one at a time to ensure they are compatible
3. Check your site

That’s it, it is easy and will not take more than 30 minutes to do the while thing. If you need us to do this, there is a service fee of $50 that includes troubleshooting bugs that are not plugin related (plugin issues should be addressed to the plugin authors).

Use the comments form below to let us know if there is a bug in this technique.