This wordpress blog is a self hosted blog, so it required a bit more than a blog hosted at Wordpress.com (which I would never recommend).

I really wanted to take this 3 day weekend off. The computer at my office has my ftp software, my laptop at home doesn’t. So..I did.

Obviously my first goal today was to upgrade. I downloaded all of the new files from the Wordpress site. I also decided I would not be a typical guy, so I read the instructions. There were some files I had to delete, and some I had to keep. I also backed up mysql database (just in case).

As soon as I transferred the new files to my server, my site was broken. I kind of expected this to happen, because nothing is ever easy when it comes to this stuff. After doing a bit of Googling, I discovered the problem was very simple.

The files I downloaded were missing 2 entire folders:

1. wp-content
2. wp-admin

I found another download source, downloaded the file and sure enough there they were. I’m sure there are thousands of others who will go crazy this week who downloaded the same folder.

When you unzip the file, be sure there are 3 folders (besides all of the regular files). You should have :

1. wp-admin
2. wp-includes (this was the only folder from my first download)
3. wp-content

Here are a few basic tips:

• Follow These Directions
• They recommend deleting some files first. I am the king of shortcuts, so I am surprised that I didn’t skip that step. If I had skipped the step, the folders that weren’t there from my first download wouldn’t have been changed. I would not of know this, and I can imagine the bugs I would of had.
• Be sure to disable all of your plugins
• When you log into your backend, Wordpress will have a link waiting for you to update your database. Just click it, they take care of everything.
• When you are done, be sure to enable your plugins (especially your SEO Plugins – You don’t want the Googlebot and Slurps indexing new insane url’s).
• Time? It took me an hour. If I didn’t have that problem it would of been 20 minutes from start to finish.

One other note. Whenever I write a blog post, I wait 5 minutes and then do a Google Blog search for my post. It is always there. However, after performing the upgrade and creating a blog post I checked and it’s not there! It’s been about 2 hours now. Is there a ping setting I have to change?