I like WordPress. It is free, simple and has loads of usefull plugins and nice themes.
What was always quite annoying was the upgrade process. An annoying upgrade process leads to the problem that one might not immediately upgrade to a new version, which can make the installations insecure.
Then WordPress added a feature to easily upgrade plug-ins, which was an important step ahead. But upgrading the blogging software itself was still annoying.
Now there is a plug-in which makes upgrading to a new version easy. I upgraded from WordPress 2.6.1 to WordPress 2.6.2 just a few minutes ago. Once the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin is installed you can start the process, the plugin guides you step by step. The plugin does the following for you:
- Backup of wordpress files
- Backup of wordpress database
- Downloads the latest WordPress version (currently WordPress 2.6.2)
- The tool even puts your website in maintenance mode!
- It deactivates all installed plugins
- In the next step the files are upgraded
- Upgrade of database
- Reactivation of plugins
- Deactivation of maintenance mode
This makes upgrading wordpress a real joy! I think this should be part of the next WordPress version. Everyone should install this plugin. I would even go so far to rate Automatic Upgrade the most important WordPress plugin.