I received a email from my own blog. Yup, wordpress@paranoidprofessor.com, which is actually pretty amazing as that email address doesn’t really exist.
The content of the mail was as follows.
Please update your site at http://blog.paranoidprofessor.com to WordPress 4.4.1.
Updating is easy and only takes a few moments:
http://blog.paranoidprofessor.com/wp-admin/update-core.php
If you experience any issues or need support, the volunteers in the WordPress.org support forums may be able to help.
https://wordpress.org/support/
Keeping your site updated is important for security. It also makes the internet a safer place for you and your readers.
The WordPress Team
I indeed had not been paying enough attention and I didn’t want to run an unpatched system. I am also glad that the system is clever enough to pay attention to upgrades and inform me when they are missing.
The idea that I could update my blog by simply running the update-core.php script sounded a bit too good to be true. So, I did all of the things that you should recommend to someone getting ready to “upgrade software”.
- dump the database
- use wordpress export script
- backup wordpress file system
Not to be anti-climatic but the script actually didn’t work.
I cannot blame WordPress for this. My setup was manually setup in a virtual environment and it is not even properly recognized by the environment manager Plesk. So I went through and did it the old school – from the command prompt.
I would go through and describe it blow by blow but actually this is much better described by wordpress.org. Yet, other than the backing up I would recommend perhaps a few extra steps.
- don’t work in the actual directory itself, create a work copy
- perform all update steps in the working copy directory
- shutdown your web server
- rename the current directory to new name
- rename the work copy to your actual directory
- start up your web server
- finish the upgrade process
Why? Well, if you need to look anything up you always have the original directory, and your site will only be down for a few seconds.
