I want to upgrade my wordpress to current 2.1.3 version.. should i do according to the steps provided on wordpress.org OR Can I upgrade it from cpanel - fantastico with single click without problem ?
Yeah, fantastico is the easier and least-stressful way to go as long as you have that option. When I had to upgrade my blogs manually, it was like a freaking train wreck! I always use cPanel now.
I'm debating a manual upgrade on one of my blogs right now... for whatever reason it seems to be the only wp blog I didn't install with fantastico (probably b/c it was moved from another domain / sub-domain, but I can't remember how I did that). There are so many plugins and so many drastic theme changes that I'm slightly terrified to even take the time to try it. lol
@jhmattern - You can only update from cpanel -fantastico if you installed the previous version from fantastico only.. thanks everybody for clearing my confusion.
I know that. That's why I'm bugged by the fact that this is the one installation I didn't do that way, and why I said I'm debating doing a "manual" upgrade.
Manually upgrading with WordPress is easy by itself, without the chance of your servers' fantastico upgrade not being up to date. FTP files, go to upgrade.php, click begin, and done. That's all a manual upstall entails with a WP installation.
That's assuming that you don't have a lot of template changes (which I've heard can get screwed up), or plugins that you need that won't work under the new upgrade (my biggest concern personally, b/c I have a ton of plugins on that site).
Any problems you would have, that you've mentioned, you would have with a Fantastico upgrade as well. The Fantastico upgrade does not make any modifications to your plugins or theme files.
Yeah, a manual upgrade doesn't change anything in your wp-content folder except for your default themes and plugins (akismet) but it's still scary when your template doesn't work with the newer version. Last time I upgraded, my nav bar disappeared. It took forever, but I finally found a fix for it. Until then though, my hair was being ripped out by the second trying to figure it out.
I first back up everything. Before I used to delete files then upload the updated files. Now I just use ftp and replace the files of wordpress (overwrite). then use the update script.
I do that too. I use SmartFTP to delete the old files then I copy the new files back in. But is it just me or should it be DumbFTP? Half the time when I'm copying files it doesn't copy them all. Instead of 19 files, I'll end up with 17. That's one of the reasons why I hate upgrading wordpress cause that stupid crap always happens to me. Or maybe I'm the dumb one and I just don't know how to use it.