How To Upgrade Your WordPress Install Without a Glitch

Have you ever had a WordPress website suddenly lose its functionality without rhyme or reason?

One very important housekeeping task we have learned is the need to plan out your WordPress upgrades. If you don’t tend to this important housekeeping item, you may suddenly lose plugin functionality or your theme may not work the way it used to work prior to the upgrade.

You don’t want to end up with a broken website as indicated at this post: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/281-upgrade-breaks-site.

Upgrading is imperative for security and for new technological updgrades. Spending a few extra dollars on the front end can save a whole lot time and money in the long run (and frustration).

WordPress and plugin developers have created an excellent plugin called WordPress Beta Tester. Here are the steps we take when WordPress has released a larger update.

Install WordPress in a test environment – Either set one up on your desktop, or simply do a install on your server. We call ours BreakIt.
Install the WordPress Beta Tester plugin – You can change the settings to your choice, we pick Bleeding Edge Nightly Builds, meaning the plugin will update your WordPress install to be the latest nightly build automatically. You can find the settings menu in your WordPress admin area and then Tools/Beta Testing.
Optional – We install the Top 10 Plugins. You may have your own favorite list of plugins that you install frequently. You will want to install those so you can test them also.
When we test a client site, we import their posts and pages through the Import/Export Tools in the WordPress Admin area and move their template files there to test.
You may want to copy your sidebar widgets over to make sure everything in the sidebars are working correctly as well.

With all of those steps completed, you can now test their templates and plugins on the test platform.