Since I have been on the theme of useful, and “must have” plugins of late, I thought I would pass one on that is extremely helpful. it is called the Instant Upgrade Plugin for WordPress. This plugin does exactly what its name implies–upgrades your WordPress installation instantly. It will download the new files to your server, overwriting the old ones (except for the wp-content files and the wp-config.php file). It then installs the new installation, and runs the database upgrade. I have used this plugin to upgrade my blogs to the new WordPress 2.5.1, which is supposed to provide a security upgrade over the previous version.
When using this plugin, make sure to first download and install the WP Backup plugin that I wrote about earlier. I have not had any problems thus far with my upgrades with this plugin, but you certainly want to have backups of your work available just in case anything bad should happen!
This plugin is very easy to install and use. Simply download the zip file, unzip it and upload the contents of the file into your plugins directory on your server. Then, when you log in to your account, you will find the plugin listed on your plugins tab (far right hand side of the page in WordPress 2.5 and up). Activate the plugin by clicking on the “activate” button listed with the plugin. Next, click on your “Manage” tab, and click the heading that says “InstantUpgrade”. The first thing you will be asked to do is to configure the plugin. There are two options, FTP or HTTP. I used HTTP without any problems, and you should be able to as well, unless there is a need to change file permissions. FTP can be used if you are uncomfortable making the changes necessary on some servers for use of HTTP. The plugin author recommends HTTP installation.
After you configure the plugin, it will run a test to make sure that your settings are valid, and that it will be able to upgrade your WordPress. This is done in a matter of seconds. Finally, it will inform you that you can now begin upgrading. This setup, and configuring process only has to be done once. After this, you can use it to upgrade with every new release of the software.
Upgrading is a snap. Simply click on the “upgrade WordPress” button, after selecting that you want to install the latest version of WordPress. The plugin does all the work for you, and in about 20 seconds (or less) you will be running the latest version of WordPress!
Enjoy!
