Easier upgrading

That depends on where you are upgrading from. 2.0? 2.0.1? 1.5.1? … there have to be a lot of lists. But of course it’s possible.

You can always do a diff on the old version and the new one and then upload only the changed files. I do that because it’s interesting to see what changed.

Yeah, I wouldn’t mind a changed files only ZIP for minor upgrades.

And technically you don’t need to delete files for minor upgrades as in most cases, files aren’t removed (that’s the reason for deleting files for the most part).

This idea is probably best for 2.0.x – as when upgrading from 1.5.x to any 2.0.x version it is best to go with full script.

So, let’s say if you’re going to upgrade from 2.0 to 2.0.2 you would need to download both the “upgrade to 2.0.1” and “upgrade to 2.0.2” to make the upgrade.

But of course, just a list of what files that has been changed (Does that excist somewhere?) would do as well, when come to think about it. (And that’s probably less job for the developers than creating a download package.)

I don’t have that much php knowledge to just look at the code and then know exactly what has been changed, and I don’t think most of people who use wordpress don’t have that knowledge (or the time to figure it out) either.

I have linked the two diff files in my blog at:
https://bobsblog.de/bob/index.php/2006/03/20/upgrade-auf-wordpress-202/

btw.: I know my theme is broken, but time is a valueable gift …

Is one-click upgrading a possibility? This could relieve a lot of stress for newer users. Also, it would ensure that everyone upgrades when important security releases are released.

tomthewebmaster, if you can come up with a tool that would allow a vast majority of WordPress users on the miriad types of servers and setup configurations that exists out there to be able to do this…

It’s a topic that comes up from time to time (even with the devs). Good solutions for it are, um, rare.

I don’t know how viable creating a general utility would be. If someone could create a utility to do this and then send it out to hosts to customize and add to their servers, that would be cool. I don’t have the codeing knowledge to do this.

Looking at Fantastico might be a good starting place. I have Fantastico on my hosting account. It creates a Word Press blog and database, but it does now allow upgrading of blogs. I do this through FTP, just like I am sure most other users do. Creating a utiliity that actually upgrades Word Press would probably prove more difficult.

Getting a utility like this on hosting accounts would probably expand the Word Press userbase.

“I don’t have the codeing knowledge to do this.“

As don’t I. It would be a complicated project whether a generalized tool or one aimed specifically at WordPress. And it would deal with a lot of the same issues the WordPress devs as a whole do, and more. Is something like this possible? Of course it is, but it would be quite a project to take on.

“Getting a utility like this on hosting accounts would probably expand the Word Press userbase.“

Well, I can’t disagree with that. I’d even remove the “probably.”

What’s wrong with CVS? It’ll magically download whatever files have changed. (It works for Gallery)

What’s CVS?

UPDATE: Found it… should have tried a Google search first.

Sorry for pulling up an old thread again, but this just echoed my thoughts very well…

An easy way to upgrade is really needed. The five step upgrade might be easy for anyone that likes hacking code, but for any non-programmer that just want to install a blog and make sure it is updated and secure, the upgrading can seem scary.

First thing that needs to be done:

Remove the subfolder in the zip file. This is a real annoyance. I never install WordPress in a subfolder as I run it as the main CMS on the sites where I use it. So upgrading is always a pain. Installing in a subfolder is again no problem if you are a programmer, can fix your .htaccess so nobody will notice it etc. But generally it is a bad idea to force this on people. If you want it in a subfolder, then create the subfolder of your choice and unzip it there. Most people do not have shell access to their hosting account. But many have cPanel. And in cPanel your only option is to unzip as is…

Second:

Make increment upgrades available (is this the right word?).

2.0-2.0.5.zip
2.0.1-2.0.5.zip
2.0.2-2.0.5.zip
2.0.3-2.0.5.zip
2.0.4-2.0.5.zip

Any older than 2.0 will have to upgrade to 2.0 first.

This system is being used for Joomla at the moment and works great. Takes the whole problem out of upgrading. Just ftp the upgrade to your root installation and use cPanel to unzip it. Done.

A good upgrade function in WordPress would be to have a tool that check the www.remarpro.com server for new versions and alert you when you log on to the admin panel. Then have a button that download the upgrade and unzip it. Basically a little more automated version of the one above. This method only deals with WordPress files, so it does not matter what OS you are on.

I think we all can agree that keeping all WordPress installations secure is a must. But with the current way to upgrade, a lot of people do not fix things until it is broken. And this has to be addressed.

The reason why I do not like unzipping and rezipping to get rid of the subfolder, is that I am hosting my websites on a Linux server, and doing anything to files on a windows PC tends to always break something…

BTW – I have noticed that some people do a diff and make it available online. This is fine, but for security reasons, this should be done by the WordPress team.

hi,

i came to this forum to make a post for the exact same topic, nice to see that other people have the same ‘problem’. I like WP and I think its a great tool but the upgrade process is rather tedious. I am not sure how it could be made easier but Oceanwatcher’s post seems to be a good start.

cheers
martin

It would be nice to get some response from somebody that is close to the core programmers on this request. I think it is a critical thing, because I am sure it keeps a lot of people from upgrading their blogs.

And unsecured blogs with difficult upgrade routines could give WordPress a bad reputation.

Yeah, it’d be nice if a 6-file update (2.0.6->2.0.7) didn’t require that I redownload the entire wordpress application and manually extract and replace those 6 files. Isn’t this what patches are for?

How about this: Each time there’s another update, post a .patch to update from the previous version to the new latest. Since you’ve started having updates every <1 month, this is likely the largest source of WP downloads anyway.

All other upgrades (anything greater than “n => n+1”) can use the full download.