Baby Boomer hubby and I upgraded nine sites yesterday but crased one. How? We used two separate, but effective methods. One method was using two great plug-ins.

WordPress Database Backup Plugin

This is an excellent, uncomplicated,on-demand backup of your WordPress database. Navigate to Manage ? Backup to get started. By Austin Matzko.

WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin

This plugin allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the
latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions.
Go to WordPress Automatic Upgrade to upgrade your installation Thanks to Ronald Huereca for making the plugin run in automatic mode. By Keith Dsouza.

Bluehost Support

We also used something called Simple Scripts on one of our hosts, Bluehost.   All of our site were installed using Fantastico but we converted to simple scripts because it was current with version 2.7.

It was really easy to convert and then upgrade to version 2.7. But how did we crash one of our sites?

Well it was easy. We neglected to deactivate one of the plugins. In this case, it was the Podpress plugin. One of my hubby’s site’s Crumbsnatcher.com just showed strange, I mean really strange error codes when we tried to go to the site.

Well, rather than panic, cry or take a pill we decided to call Bluehost.   The delivered support at it’s finest. They analyzed the situation and explained what happened. The also corrected it for us. How cool. Now it is true that most hosts don’t support WordPress but Bluehost gives a lot of handholding to help you find the solution.

Of course the other reason I like them is because I can call then if I am at this computer at strange hours.

So, We only have one additional site to upgrade. I saved it , just in case, I wanted to demonstrate how we used Simple Scripts on Bluehost.

Meanwhile, be sure to visit The Word Press Wizard because she did a simply outstanding teleseminar on how to upgrade your site. She reminded us of the things to do to insure our themes, widgets and plugins survive the process.

So happy upgrading!