How I Upgraded to WordPress 2.3.1 in One Easy Step
See that? Upgraded. No problem.
Here’s how: I paid someone.
Here’s the deal. I’m a generalist. That means I know a little bit a lot of different things. I hang out with smart people and usually take their advice and guidance.
I took up blogging and started with WordPress.com because of Chris. When I got serious, I changed to WordPress.org with his encouragement.
I am hosted by Bluehost.com because they are a recommended provider of WordPress.com.
Reading Savvy Boomer and Head Rambles for techie stuff is fun because as Grandad likes to say “they take the backs off things” to see how they work.
Installing the audio player happened because Grandad did it, and I thought it was cool. It wasn’t hard for a generalist.
About the same time, WordPress kept hounding me to upgrade to 2.3 because of b00geymen in the previous versions that might reach out and hit me in the nuts.
I ignored it. I’m a generalist. I like plug and play. I don’t like backing up databases and and reading detailed instructions. I don’t like it when I read “this might blow your whole blog to smithereens and you will lose all your comments.” I know that one misplaced > can foul up everything. When I moved to .org from .com, I lost all my images because I missed the part that images would not be part of the backup data.
I ignored WordPress. I even stopped wearing a cup when I blogged.
I had just installed the “related posts” plug-in and it worked, so I was feeling pretty smug when I got an email from Kirk at Just-thinkin.net. Would I please add a plug-in so commenters could subscribe to a post comment feed? He provided the link and everything.
I checked it out, seemed like a plug and play, so I installed it. I need all the commenters I can muster!
One thing led to another and Kirk agreed to upgrade my site to 2.3.1.
Ta Da! If you want this to appear painlessly on your WordPress blog
please give Kirk a shot. Because of him, my blog is more secure and has more bells and whistles to attract more traffic. It will automagically back up stuff and upgrade itself, and a whole bunch of other stuff that I don’t know yet.
It was painless. I highly recommend it.
He made me take his money. He forced me to realize that I had to stop doing this for free. I’m not really a greedy SOB. I just wanna help folks out. That’s the truth…really…
Oh yeah…for any WordPress blogger that’s hosted by Yahoo or some kind of Billy Bob’s Cheap-Ass Hosting Service, I’ll gladly help move them to a legitimate hosting service but that’s it. Just in case anybody asks. 😀
BTW, you still have to upgrade all your plugins yourself my friend, it just automatically tells you about it (just had to say it I did).
And many thanks for the write up. Much appreciated sir!
See what I started Kirk? The only guy I trust with the guts of my blog. He did my upgrade too. And I still hound with the endless questions, though I do try to space them out so he won’t stop answering 😉
Nice blog, I’ll be back to visit.
@Kirk: so far so good. You’re a bargain.
@Elaine: Welcome. Come back again soon. One crack about my M&M addiction and you will be unwelcome!
So Kirk, what do you think of DreamHost? That’s who I’ve got, and they are anything but cheap-ass. However, I’m scared to upload anything because my WordPress blog was set up by Sean Slinsky (see seanslinsky dot com) and I’m afraid it will, I don’t know, explode or something if I mess around with it. I know just enough about computers to be dangerous, but not a drop more.
You didn’t ask me, but I can weigh in on Bluehost.com. They are cheap. $6.95 a month and stable.
You have Ben Nomiginated for a Pullatitser. Sind $$ quik
You are an honorary Conehead.
Hi Gretchen,
Nothing wrong with Dreamhost and I’d do an upgrade for someone hosted by them. Folks have complaints about them but they complain about Bluehost too. If Dreamhost works for you then no problem.
With that said it seems you have a very old version of WordPress (2.0.3) which you should give serious consideration of upgrading. A lot of blogging folks out there worry about explosions too so you’re not alone in that respect. 🙂 Me? I’m just an old tech head who loves to bang around the insides of WordPress. If you want, give me a shout using my contact page and I can fill you in on some details.
Hey Elaine!
Fancy meeting you here and thanks for the kind words. I guess the bribe paid off. 🙂
BTW, Gretchen,
One of the things I don’t like about DreamHost is that they charge for a lot of features that hosts like Bluehost and a few others provide free of charge and Sixty’s right when he says that Bluehost has a better price. $5.95 a month for a two year sign up. And there’s 3-4 other hosts that are just about as reasonable on both price and features.