Today I merrily set about the latest upgrade to WordPress – just from 2.8.1 to 2.8.2 – and learned a valuable lesson or two (in good time for the next upgrade to 2.8.3 which was hot on its heels!)

Part way through the upgrade, using the WP-Automatic-Upgrade plugin (which is no longer necessary, but we’ll deal with that later) – everything went white – the screen was blank.  And the website too – the infamous “white wall” that is referred to in such instances.

Now I know that a compatibility issue with the plugins can be the most likely cause of problems – that’s generally the first thing to look at.  So using my trusty FireFTP to connect, I renamed the plugins folder to explugins, creating a new one of the original name, with nothing in it (this is a quick way to disable all plugins if you cannot get to the WP control panel).  Still no joy!  So then I thought I’d see what the server logs might have to say about it all – only to find that I’d used up all of the diskspace! Aha!  Now this is a website that includes a shop, so indeed needs it’s space and I’d been a bit thorough in my server housekeeping, it seems.

The immediate action was to increase the space available, which of course did not resolve the WordPress upgrade issue – that would have been too easy!  What had happened is some of the files had been upgraded/uploaded, and some had not.  The only thing for it was to manually upload the new version of WordPress – downloading, upzipping and then replacing all the files (except those in the wp-content folder, of course – that’s where all the theme stuff is kept and I did not fancy re-doing all of that again!).

Now – all upgrades will include the following as standard, instead of thinking that I am immune from such mini-disasters!

Always, before you action your WordPress upgrade, go to your plugins, select them all, choose the “deactivate” option and Apply.

Then you can upgrade your WordPress, hopefully with no hiccups (that’s a whole other blog post!), and when done you can pop back to your Plugins section and activate each, one by one.

And

Related posts:

1. Upgrade your WordPress

2 Responses to “Upgrading your WordPress – disable your plugins first!”